#if not to Felix then another shifter | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bountyhaunter · 9 months ago

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TIMING: Mid March LOCATION: The Grit Pit PARTIES: Felix @recoveringdreamer and Daiyu @bountyhaunter SUMMARY: Felix comes across Daiyu storming out of an office at the Pit, after she's refused to hand over her bounty. A lot of conflicting emotions swirl between the two, but one thing is sure: the Grit Pit sucks! CONTENT WARNINGS: Abuse.

She really didn’t set out to make enemies in life, it just happened. Like today. Daiyu had marched into the location supplied to her at The 3 Daggers with a trio of unconscious beasts in a small travel crate, excited to collect her reward and get on with her day. It was best not to think about the rest of it all — why someone wanted an alive creature rather than a dead one, why they were willing to pay more than seemed fair. She wanted to get herself a nice meal (a burger) and a nice drink (a cherry coke) and maybe another treat (a tub of ice cream).

Upon arrival at the address, though, something had rubbed her the wrong way. That gut feeling had proven right when she’d found out what this place. The so-called Grit Pit, a place where creatures and shapeshifters fought. No wonder something was constantly tugging at her stomach as she moved through the building. This place was filled with prey, made into predator, made into the personal profit of whoever was on top.

She was different, she told herself: she scraped together the money she needed to get by through hunting. She hadn’t built a company or legacy on her bounties. She wasn’t like these people, just as she wasn’t like her family, who’d gotten richer and richer off the backs of beasts and shifters alike. She was, wasn’t she? Her frustration with it all made her prickly, caused her to cuss out the person who she was supposed to make the exchange with — someone who seemed human but so glib that he might as well be a vampire with how he was draining her energy.

Daiyu had slammed the door when she’d left, throwing one more expletive over her shoulder and leaving with the still snoozing Aniukhas. “Fucking unbelievable, this town can —” Her muttering was interrupted as she felt another tug in her stomach, eyes flaring up to see a normal-looking person peer at her. “What?!”

—

Someone had taken sympathy on them tonight. It was a rare occasion, but Felix had been ‘working’ a lot more often lately. With the combination of their brief absence after their altercation with Parker and the fight they’d thrown for Beau, the higher ups at the Pit hadn’t been particularly happy with the balam for a while now, and the fight schedule had reflected as much. First it had been back to back fights, then they’d been scheduled for less in a way that made it harder and harder to pay the bills, then back to back again. It made it impossible for them to catch their bearings, hard to predict what their next week would look like.

But today, they’d only had a couple fights. Easy, but not so easy that the pay was bad. There was an unfamiliar feeling of optimism as they gathered their things, a nice sensation that things might be looking up just a little. They had time to get groceries, and money to buy them with. Wasn’t that all they could really ask for? Felix looked downright pleased as he made his way towards the door, stopping only when someone slammed the door to one of the offices, storming out into the hall.

They didn’t mean to stare, really. It was just… kind of a commotion, was all. Felix blinked at the stranger, eyes going from her face to the creatures she was carrying. “Uh, sorry,” they said when she spoke, glancing down. “I was just… Are you okay? Um, do you need… help? With that.” They nodded to the creatures in her arms, uncertain.

—

They stared daggers at the shapeshifter, wishing they were some kind of magic thing that could do that literally and not just figuratively. Daiyu didn’t like being perceived in moments like these, moments where she was wearing her emotions on her sleeve. Her anger, even if it was so easily provoked, was something personal, something that was intwined with the past and inner battles.

It made it easy for others to undermine her, didn’t it? Vissarion egging her on when she was already enraged, Inna pressing on the sore spots to make her more angry and her father pulling the rug from under her as he reminded her that her anger was nothing but a feeling. And feelings, Daiyu, they’re a waste of this fiery energy. She knew she was burning a bridge right now, that it would be better for her position as a local ranger to keep ties with a place like this — and she didn’t want to be seen in such a passion. It made her appear weak, didn’t it? To be so conflicted, so hypocritical, so easily angered.

“Yeah, I’m fine, this is just a bullshit place,” she bristled at the shapeshifter, wondering what they were, what position they held here. A bullshit one too, probably. “With bullshit people.” She held the cage closer. “No. This is coming with me. Tell your people to find their Aniukhas somewhere else, yeah?” She’d have to figure out what to do with them now. Kill them? Try and find someone else who might like a trio of Aniukhas and get her coin? She despised herself, which made her despise everyone around her too. Including the shifter across her.

—

Felix found it difficult to argue with her assessment of things. The Grit Pit was a treacherous, predatory place full of treacherous, predatory people. They wondered absently if she’d been forced into a contract of some kind or another, if her anger was due to her learning that something had been taken from her. Had they felt a similar anger when Leo revealed the cruel nature of his intentions? When he’d laughed at the idea that Felix thought love could save a man who’d never needed saving to begin with? Or when he’d tried to leave town only to find that awful bind twisting him up inside, showing them just how far the pull of the Grit Pit could go?

They weren’t sure anger had ever been the right word for what they’d felt. Felix wasn’t as good at anger as they wanted to be. They were much more skilled in grief and mourning, in quiet acceptance. They wanted to fight back, wanted to set the world on fire with their rage the way this stranger looked ready to now, but they’d never quite managed to burn hot enough to do so. They always came up short. Too small, too meek, too forgiving. They wished they could be different, but they didn’t know how.

“Oh. They’re not really, uh… my people,” Felix admitted, looking at the creatures — Aniukhas, she’d called them? — with mild curiosity. “I think it’s good. That you’re taking them. They — They shouldn’t be here.” While Felix’s contract was cruel, less-sentient beings like the ones in her arms now suffered an even harsher fate at the Grit Pit. At least fights between shifters and other humanoid species didn’t tend to be of the ‘to the death’ variety — after all, the Grit Pit had to keep a good supply of fighters if they wanted to make good money, and that was what they cared about the most. “What are you going to do with them? You’re not… I mean, you won’t hurt them, right?”

—

From what she had gathered about this place, the Aniukhas would be outnumbered. They were vicious creatures, sure, and had to be taken care of properly, but compared to some of the other creatures this place boasted to have in the ring? They stood little chance. Daiyu’s mind crawled with images of the rodents devouring a shapeshifter and rising from its corpse, though, their numbers multiplying and turning on the crowd. She imagined a wolf crunching down on the creatures with furious jaws. All to line someone’s pocket.

She tried to recall whether her father had ever kept Aniukhas. Probably — he’d let them procreate from decaying corpses until having something else take them all down, a perfect example of the food chain among the bestial. That’s how it often went, at home, whenever the Volkovs were in an entertainment mood. Slaughter upon slaughter, with the hunter always on top of the food chain. Lest they forget that their superior humanity made them stand above them all.

She considered the shifter, at what they were saying. Not my people. The fuck did that mean? “So why’re you here then?” Daiyu followed their gaze and the small beasts, still so peaceful in their slumber. “Nah, they shouldn’t. Nothing should. Violence isn’t …” What wasn’t it? Who was she to condemn violence of any form, when so often she felt most like herself when covered in sticky blood? “Whatever. This is bullshit.”

The question of what she was to do with the Aniukhas was a good one, a stab in the gut. She should kill them. They were predatorial and pestlike, could spread their bloodsucking ways by multiplying. But Daiyu had never been good at going round the house and killing a creature. She did it in the heat of the moment. To sedate them and slay them after — it took a kind of detachment, a vicious coldness she lacked. She could stab these creatures in the eye without second thought when they were awake and dangerous, but now? What should she do, get a bucket, drown them so they’d die in their sleep? She wanted to kick in the door she’d just slam shut and yell some more. “Dunno. They’re dangerous. Look cute now, but they’re not. I dunno.”

—

Why’re you here, then? It was a much more complicated question than it should have been, and Felix wanted to laugh at the absurdity at it all. The idea that this would become their life hadn’t been something that had occurred to them at all when they’d lived in the woods in the stifling house their father built to keep them safe, and not just because they hadn’t known of the Pit’s existence. The idea that they’d ever leave that house had seemed preposterous, like an impossible thing. They’d been so sure that they’d stay there for the rest of their life, so sure that the safe space their father insisted upon would be their prison in the end.

Escape should have been a good thing, shouldn’t it? It should have been celebratory, exciting. Instead, all Felix had managed to do was trade one prison for another — a worse one, really. At least in his father’s house, he’d been able to tell himself that every terrible thing was done for love. Their father had wanted them safe, even if the only way he’d known to achieve that was to keep them secured. But the Grit Pit? Felix was here to make money for strangers who would throw him to the pretty literal wolves if it meant they could stuff a few extra bills into their wallets at the end of the night.

So why were they here? Because they had to be. Because every other option had been taken from them by force. Mostly, though… “I’m under contract.” It was all they could say without risking consequences from the bind, and consequences weren’t worth risking to explain themself to a stranger with an armful of Aniukhas. Even if they did find themself agreeing with the stranger more and more. They nodded, looking down at their feet. “Yeah,” they said quietly, throat dry. It was stupid. They knew it was stupid.

He looked at the unconscious creatures in her arms, feeling a cold discomfort spread through him. They thought of Parker, of the sedatives on his belt, of the terror of losing consciousness in one place and regaining it somewhere else. “I can take them.” They didn’t know why they blurted it out, but the words were out of their mouth in a tumble and they had no desire to take them back. “I can take them and — and find somewhere to let them go. Where they could be… safer.”

—

There was something pitiful about the shapeshifter in front of her. Daiyu hadn’t been made to feel pity, especially not for those that made her guts churn with recognition, those that her kind were intended to hunt — but she had always come up short. Not just in height, but in the department of emotions too. There’d been a period where she’d refused to eat Snicker-Snackers because their illustrations in her family’s books had tugged on her heartstrings. She’d been forced to sit at the table until she’d fallen asleep with her head on the mahogany. Her father had smashed a plate next to it to wake her up.

But her uncle had always applauded that heart. Told her to cherish it. To cling to it. Even if it made her feel weaker than her siblings. As she stared at the shifter looking at their feet, murmuring something about a contract, Daiyu felt there was something afoot here. Asking bounty hunters to do their dirty work, locking up creatures to make them fight. Beasts had animalistic instincts, didn’t know a fighting ring from a forest floor if there was a predator opposing them — to them it was all survival. But shifters had sentience, to a certain degree. They knew what a fighting pit was, what was happening with the profits. They had a contract to sign. Something was sinister about it. Wrong.

She didn’t understand magic very well, but she knew there was more binding things than legal documents. To be fair, she didn’t know a lot about legal documents either. Daiyu had never had a proper job and though some bounties required a signature of sorts it was never something that could be brought up in a court of law, anyway. “Ohhhh, right. Under contract. Like … temporary contract or like permanent?” She didn’t sound empathetic. Something always went wrong when words went from her heart to her mouth.

The other spilled out empathy as if they were leaking it. An easy target, she thought, and then banished the thought. It was a cruel and ugly thought. But to feel something so soft for creatures like these, it was … interesting. Foolish. Understandable. “Are you … sure? They’re really not ... they deceive, their looks. They can be right trouble. Don’t want them to spread.” Daiyu should do the right thing. Go out to the woods and kill them, before they multiplied and took more effort to be taken out. She had half a mind to set them loose on the owners of this shitty place.

—

They could feel her looking at them, in a way that had very little to do with the jaguar’s instincts in their chest and much more to do with the quiet anxiety that thrummed beneath their skin at all times. Felix had never much liked to be looked at. It was one of the many things they hated about their job at the Grit Pit, one of a multitude of reasons they felt sick just thinking about how they spent their nights. When you were in the ring, everyone was looking at you. All the time. You were a spectacle, an exhibit. Felix had never wanted to be that.

But, of course, Felix had never wanted any of this. Like the creatures this woman had thought better than to give to the people behind that door, Felix was a commodity here. A product, a thing bought and sold. But there was no one to take him out to the woods for freedom, no one who had second thoughts about the life they were forcing him into. It was stupid to feel jealous of creatures that hardly seemed sentience, but a hint of envy rose up in their chest all the same.

They shrugged listlessly at her question. “Permanent, I guess.” There were only so many ways to escape the Grit Pit’s clutches, and Felix wasn’t sure they could stomach what any of them meant. With more desperation, maybe they could bring themself to trade their contract for another, but… On some level, they hoped they wouldn’t. They didn’t want to be that kind of person, didn’t want to take advantage of anyone else the way they had been taken advantage of. There were lines that didn’t feel right to cross; this was one of them.

Glancing back up, Felix let their eyes settle on the creatures in her arms and shrugged. “I’m not exactly how I look, either,” they admitted. It didn’t feel like much of a confession. If she was here, with these beasts in her arms, she knew what this place was. She knew that anyone who worked here must have something under the surface. “They shouldn’t… I mean, obviously they shouldn’t be here. If I take them out in the woods someplace, far away from town, they can… I don’t know. Live like they’re supposed to, I guess?”

—

Her father would balk at the idea that a shapeshifting fighter should be allowed to walk around freely. Of course, the way her family tended to pit creatures and beasts against one another was vastly different from this place. Less organized, more akin to the way regular humans made dogs or bulls fight. Beasts were problems that could prove solutions — in their duty to eliminate them, the Volkovs turned a profit. Letting a shifter roam free was laughable, especially when they didn’t even want to be somewhere. Bad business.

Daiyu didn’t agree with that notion, though — that it was laughable, that there was even a business mindset to apply here. What she did think of it all, she didn’t know. It just pissed her off. All of it. Like a thunderous cloud rolling over her mind, it took away all other conscious thought and just made everything into one very simple thing. Anger.

“Permanent, cool. Set for life.” Her own voice sounded estranged to her. She wasn’t sure what it was the other was implying, how this place functioned. They didn’t look very happy about working here, and yet they did. “That was sarcasm. So what, you’re like … trapped? Or is this just your general thing where you’re working for a shitty employer ‘cus of capitalism?” She supposed she understood that. But she’d at least managed to create some distance between herself and her family, right?

She looked at the sleeping aniukhas, their red eyes hidden as their lids remained closed, and then looked at the other. “So what are you? Werewolf? Bearish? Or something else?” It was mostly those she found around here, but one could never be too sure. Daiyu reconsidered the others words. “Yeah. Maybe. They drink blood, so keep ‘em from the trails, where the people come. I guess they’re fine on the foodchain, but best to keep regular humans from messing with them, they don’t know how to … handle them.” They’d kill them easy enough, not knowing what kind of infestation they might be starting. “They like it cold.” She was still clutching the cage, not yet convinced of handing it over yet. “Woods are good.”

—

Set for life. That was how the Grit Pit drew some people in, Felix knew. There were plenty of fighters who were in it for the money — plenty who wanted to be here, even. Wyatt didn’t seem to hate it, and Samir even seemed to rely on it to some extent. But Felix? This was never something they would have chosen for themself had they known exactly what it was they were signing up for. If they had any choice in the matter at all, they wouldn’t be here now, wouldn’t be stuck fighting night after night for a paycheck they felt dirty collecting.

But it wasn’t something they could explain to this woman here and, even if it were, it wasn’t something they were sure they would want to explain to a stranger. After all, what did the truth offer beyond a look into just how stupid Felix had been? There was no way out of it, even if someone did know how thoroughly they were trapped. Plenty of people had promised to help him — Wyatt, Zane, others — but what good would it do? The only way to free themself from the chains was to place them on someone else’s wrists, and Felix couldn’t stomach the thought.

They let out an uncertain, forced laugh as she clarified her sarcasm, nodding their head. “Um, not like the second thing. I can’t — I’m not allowed to say too much.” Even saying as much as they had already left an acidic taste in their mouth, the promise that bound them rearing its ugly head in protest. Discomfort flooded over them, and they worried their lip between their teeth thoughtfully.

There was another moment of hesitation as she asked what they were. Was it suspicious, the way she seemed to only suggest shifters as options? Should Felix be concerned? But they looked to the creatures in her arms, the ones she’d been unable to hand over to the people behind that door, and they felt some naive sense of trust. “Balam,” they replied with a shrug. “Um, jaguar. In case you… don’t know what a balam is.” Some people didn’t. They were a little less common than werewolves or bugbears, after all. “Yeah. We can release them someplace where they won’t hurt anyone. Except for, you know, on the food chain.” Living in the woods for as long as they had, Felix had become very comfortable with the natural order of the world. Animals had to eat other animals to survive. There was nothing wrong or evil about that, even when the animals in question didn’t look like the ones people were used to seeing. “There’s a mountain where it snows a lot,” they offered. “Maybe we could take them there. You could… come with. If you wanted.” She was clutching the cage pretty tightly, after all; maybe she’d feel more comfortable witnessing the release of the animals.

—

The concept of a contract for a shifter to fight in a shady place was something that made Daiyu twist with discomfort. Just being in this stupid place made her squirm in a way she didn’t often do any more. She wasn’t sure if she felt phased or if it was something else — if she was just grappling with the weight of legacy and history or it went deeper than that. She was often grappling with those things, after all, and they didn’t always make her feel as unearthed as she did now.

She had always been too emotional, which wasn’t untrue — it was just confusing because Daiyu had no idea what she was feeling half of the time. She just knew she wanted to kick something. She knew that she thought this place sucked, and not just for the reasons her father or family would disapprove of it. She knew she didn’t want to unpack that. She knew she shouldn’t trust a shifter to take care of beasts that were dangerous. She knew as well that she couldn’t leave them here and that she would find only ugliness in killing them now. Her hands itched. She wanted to kick another door.

“So.” She squinted, trying to recall what she’d said. “Trapped?” Maybe that’s why he was allowed to roam free, why he wasn’t shoved in a cage he was only allowed to leave to perform. Daiyu understood metaphorical chains in a sense. Sometimes she’d receive a text from her father where he asked how Maine was even though she hadn’t told him where she was. But that was different. “Shit. Don’t tell me anything you can’t.” Trusting her with something like that was a waste, anyway.

As the other revealed what they were, Daiyu found herself staring a little more intently. She didn’t come across a lot of balam — they were rare as it stood, and then the climate her family tended to favor wasn’t one balams frequented. “Oh,” she said. “Dip. Don’t see a lot of you.” She had certainly never hunted one, though she’d heard the stories. Stories were like medals among her family, as were the trophies brought home. And here she was, holding a cage of blood-sucking beasts and considering handing it over to a beast who could be worth a lot. Wasn’t money supposed to be her motivator?

She blinked. Her hands continued to itch, her urge to kick something continuing to grow. She was conflicted and that wasn’t how it was supposed to be — Daiyu charged forward without little thought. She didn’t think before she acted as that saved her a lot of grief, and yet here she was. Considering the offer. “Yeah. Okay.” She clenched her jaw, stared down at the beasts to make sure they were still alive. Her father would make her kill them slowly if he saw how she was on the precipice of granting them freedom. She didn’t want to think about what he’d do to the balam, but the thoughts leaked through. There was so much to gain here and she was throwing it all for what — conscience? Sticking it to the man inside that stupid office? Maybe that was it. Maybe she could brand this as rebellion and be okay with it. “I’ll drive. You point it out to me.”

—

Trapped. It was such a small word, but it felt bigger in the moment. Like a cell they were locked inside, a pair of handcuffs on their wrists. Felix didn’t like to let themself think about just how confined they were here. They liked to pretend they had more freedom than they did, as if they hadn’t discovered the end of their chain half a dozen times over the years. They’d tested the limits of the bind, run their fingers over the links one by one looking for weaknesses, and they’d never found any give. The Grit Pit was meticulous with the binds they tied their fighters into — it kind of had to be. After all, the people in charge weren’t particularly physically imposing, while the fighters, as a general rule, were. The tightness of the binds allowed the people in charge to protect themselves.

It also made Felix feel next to helpless.

They shrugged at the question, unable — and maybe unwilling — to answer. If they could tell her about their contract, would they? Felix was often accused of being too trusting, and maybe there was some truth to the accusation. After all, wasn’t that how they wound up bound in the Pit? Hadn’t trusting Leo ruined everything for them? They weren’t a paranoid person. There was no part of them that suspected she was associated with the Pit, even given the way she was walking freely within its walls in a place where spectators weren’t allowed to venture. But they still weren’t sure they’d tell her everything, even if they could have.

She seemed to look at them a little closer when they admitted what they were, but Felix was used to that. People would squint, sometimes, when you told them you were a shifter. As if by looking close enough, they might see the animal lurking beneath your skin. “I guess we’re, um… Not as common as some of the others.” Balam couldn’t be turned like werewolves or lamia, nor could they be born anywhere and from any background the way sirens or selkies could. Felix’s mother used to take pride in that, claiming it made them special. Felix wasn’t so sure he believed it anymore. It was hard to think that anyone was more ‘special’ than anyone else based only on how they were born.

Hesitantly, Felix nodded. “I, uh… I can’t go right now,” they admitted. “I’m still at work. But if you — If you want to meet up later, I can help you. Or you can leave them here, and I’ll take them myself. It’s… Whichever works better for you, right?” They weren’t sure they should let her leave with the beasts, but… she hadn’t hurt them yet, had she? She was doing more than anyone else probably would have to make sure they weren’t hurt. If nothing else, Felix thought that probably made her trustworthy where the little guys in the cage were concerned.

—

She disliked the place more and more the longer she stayed. The balam said little on the topic of being trapped and Daiyu battled with the feelings of compassion that always tried to force themselves into her mind. Her uncle had once told her that was her strength, that she should try to hold onto that heart of hers — but how could she? It was ruinous, to feel deeply. To feel for these creatures in a cage, for the balam in a metaphorical one, to feel for herself. She could tolerate any of it.

It was why she lived as she did. She let herself by moved by something that had no emotional value, only material ones. She let money dictate what targets she chased and spent the rest of her time on distraction. She no longer went home, where her compassion was dragged out and beaten only to rise again. She didn’t feed it either, letting herself be guided by that heart her uncle had told her to hang on to. She let it wither, because otherwise she might drown in the shame and sadness.

And yet it stirred in her now. She’d never been very good at self-control, after all. Most of the time this untouched compassion turned into something sour, something angry — but when she was unable to throw or kick something, she tended to just be weighed down by it. So there she stood, shoulders sagging at the situation. She wasn’t even excited about meeting a balam. (That, maybe, was a good thing — she wasn’t supposed to be excited about such things. At least not in the way she tended to be.)

“No, you’re not.” Which was probably why they were what they were. Trapped. Daiyu stared at the sleeping creatures, pressed her lips tight together. She despised the stupid things for putting her in this situation, but it didn’t lead to her wanting to wring their stupid necks either.

She considered her options. “Fine, finish your shift, or whatever. Come find me later. Tell me what time and I’ll drive by. I’ll keep ‘em in my car.” Daiyu didn’t want them to remain here, where the people in charge of this ugly place might get their hands on them anyway without her getting her money. “Sound good?”

—

When they’d first come into this ‘job,’ they’d fought back far more. They’d thrashed against their metaphorical chains, yanked against the leash, threw their body against the bars of their proverbial cage. They’d been a wild thing, biting and snapping at anyone who came too close, who tried to control them. It made them feel better at first. It made them feel as though they still had some power, some control. But it was an illusion. It was a fairytale, an invention they’d crafted all their own. Felix had no power here. They could thrash and yank and bite and snap, but it would never amount to anything. Someone else was in charge.

Someone else had always been in charge. Felix had never had any agency of their own in any kind of way that mattered. Their father was the one who called the shots in that cabin, where the bars of their cage had been pretty but still iron. Leo had controlled them even before there was a promise bind tying them together, using smooth phrases and empty reassurances to make Felix docile and easy to shove down. A jaguar was an apex predator, with a strong jaw and a deadly bite. But Felix? Felix was small. Felix was stupid. Felix was whoever they were told to be. And they hated that. They hated themself for being it.

What would his mother think if she saw him now, he wondered? She’d been so proud to be what she was, what they were. Balam were uncommon, were sacred. The woman in front of them now was surprised to see one, the Grit Pit were proud to own one. And what had Felix done with it? They’d let themself be locked away, allowed someone to collar them. It was shameful. Surely their mother would think the same.

They couldn’t do much to break those chains. All their attempts in the beginning had amounted to nothing but pain and threats that were anything but empty. But they could help this woman and the little creatures in her arms. They could save something, even if they couldn’t save themself. They didn’t know what it would amount to, but they thought it must amount to something. It had to.

Their eyes rose from the creatures to the woman holding them, and they met her gaze with a hesitant nod. “I… Give me your number, and I’ll text you when I’m done here.” They didn’t know what time it would be; the fights in the Pit finished when they finished and started when they started. “We’ll make sure these little guys are taken care of. I promise.”

#threads.#felix.#cages of our own.

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longislandcharm · 4 months ago

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SETTING: Prickly Pear TIMING: Current PARTIES: Ford and Felix (@recoveringdreamer) SUMMARY: Ford is trying to help take care of attackers on the farm when Felix's jaguar finds him. Fun times are had. WARNINGS: Head Trauma tw,

“What the shit?”

One minute Ford was flirting it up with one of the farmhands, the next he was fighting off a shifter going for his throat. The thing kept snapping its jaws as Ford held it back the best he could, sharp teeth digging into his dead skin on occasion. It didn't matter. This thing was as good as dead as soon as he could get his hand down to the hidden dagger in his boot. The zombie had learned years ago that it was always handy to have one hidden somewhere just in case and it hadn’t failed him yet. “Alright, pussy cat, it’s time to stop playing games.”

His usual confident swagger didn’t falter even as the cat swiped a line down his chest. He still pushed as hard he could against the animal, sending it tumbling back to the ground to give him enough time. The dagger was retrieved, the shifter came running at him again, and Ford sunk the blade deep into its chest while using that strength that was starting to build inside of him. If he didn’t get out of here soon he knew he was going to go feral but he couldn’t just leave this place to defend itself. No, Monty needed him and he wasn’t going to let him down if he could help it.

A low growl alerted Ford to something stalking up behind him. He turned, his boots leaving a swirl in the dirt and his eyes taking in the form of a familiar jaguar. He could recognize Felix now, even when shifted, but what he couldn’t comprehend was why the balam was coming after him. They were on the same side. Hell, Ford had made them blush not two hours ago. “Hey buddy…it’s alright, it’s me. You know me. I’m on your side.” The last thing Ford wanted to do was hurt them. Felix was a nice person and incredibly fun to fluster. But he brandished the weapon in hand, ready to use it if he had to. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Blood dripped from the jaguar’s maw, staining the fur around his mouth with red and black. He’d been on a bloody rampage since the moment he was inadvertently released, the quiet remnant’s of Felix’s fear surging through him and making his rage burn all the hotter. The world around him seemed intent on turning him into prey; already, he had been targeted by several of those who had started the attack on the farm, though the jaguar had no way of telling those people apart from the ones who worked on the farm or attended the party as friends. To him, they were all the same. He had torn through everyone and everything in his path, animal and human alike.

The jaguar wasn’t prey, after all. He was the predator.

He spotted an altercation ahead, trotted towards it with a curious tilt to his head. Another jaguar, he realized — another balam. This one was attacking a human who brandished a knife, and the jaguar watched with some quiet fascination. Arrogant, he found it laughable that the human with the unbeating heart believed a knife could subdue a jaguar. But the blade found a home in the balam’s chest, and it fell still on the ground.

The jaguar was indifferent about the death of the other creature on a personal level. He cared for very few, and he hadn’t seen any of them in some time now. But the idea that this human believed he had some right to kill a balam this way? That made the jaguar all the angrier.

The man spoke to him, trying to placate him with calm tones and promises, but the jaguar wasn’t quite capable of understanding human speech. He carried none of Felix’s recognition towards the man, felt no camaraderie or fondness. All the jaguar ever felt was rage, and that was what drove him forward, claws out and teeth at the ready.

The jaguar wouldn’t relent, Ford realizing now that Felix was definitely not in control. The gentle person he knew wouldn’t have dreamed of swiping at the zombie much less get him right in the face. He felt his jaw crack, the farmhand crying out before a low growl started to sound from deep within his chest. He wasn’t fully gone yet but Ford was sure it was coming in the next few minutes. Did he stay and fight or try to get out of the jaguar’s grasp so he could get away from everyone here in time?

“Felix!” All of his calm demeanor had drained with that last injury, pouring from him the way his blood should have. Shit, it might have been too late to run. Ford’s eyes flashed with his hunger as he swiped back with his blade, not even knowing if he had hit the cat before he ran and tackled it to the ground.

As much as he didn’t want to hurt his friend he was already losing his grip on reality. “Felix, get a hold of your cat before this gets worse.” He was hoping he could get through somehow, maybe jerk the person back from wherever the spirit took them as he did his best to pin the thing to the ground. His grip was slipping, on the cat and himself, and he involuntarily gnashed his teeth in the animal’s direction.

The man called out Felix’s name, but the jaguar cared little for the familiarity. The world around him was on fire, violent and terrifying, and his rage burned just as hot as the flames eating through the farm he knew only from Felix’s perspective. Fear wasn’t a thing the beast enjoyed feeling, and Felix was so full of it at the moment of the shift that it seemed permanently stuck in his chest now. Rage was the only way the jaguar knew to dislodge it, and this man, with his knife and the dead jaguar at his feet, was a good target for it no matter whose name he yelled.

His claws found the man’s head, sending him stumbling in a way that would have taken a normal human down for the count. The jaguar was learning that those who lived on this farm were more resilient than the ones he fought in the ring when Felix let him free entirely. The woman he’d faced off against just after his shift had remained standing until he tore her head from her body entirely; perhaps he’d need to do the same to this man.

Perhaps he’d enjoy it, he thought, the rage burning brighter as the man’s knife slashed a painful line across his chest. The jaguar yowled, fury colored by pain as the man surged forward and wrestled him to the ground. Hands pinned him to the ground, jaws snapped at his throat. But a jaguar was a hard thing to keep down; muscles rippled across his back, powerful legs kicking at the man atop him, claws out and ready.

Ford could feel that strength he dreaded seeping in, his muscles flexing as he held down the cat the best he could. But each slash of the animal's paws sent him spiraling faster and faster to that decline and with one last deep slash across his shoulder he slipped away entirely. His eyes glossed over with a distinct foggy color, narrowing in on the live prey beneath his hold. Surging forward, the zombie tried to sink his teeth into the balam but before he could his body was tossed back by the power of the cat's strong legs. Ford had lost his grip in his desperation and therefore had lost the upper hand.

He slammed into one of the cornhole boards, wooden pieces flying as the thing broke under his weight, but it was as if the zombie didn’t even notice the piece sticking out of his arm as he leapt to his feet. Ford didn’t care that the jaguar was his scared friend, he didn’t care about the desperate calls to get to the animals on the farm, or the screams of those already being attacked, he didn’t even care that a fire was raging close by because his mind was focused on one thing and one thing only; food. A low growl left his lips before he ran towards the cat again, this time aimed to kill rather than subdue.

Something shifted within the man, though the jaguar wasn’t fully capable of recognizing it. To him, it was impossible to distinguish the previous intentions to subdue from the current ones to kill. To a wild animal, everything that wasn’t fleeing was an active threat, and anything that did flee was prey. The man’s teeth snapped at his flesh, and the balam flung him away and watched wood shatter beneath his form. There was a sense of something akin to curiosity as the cat tilted his head to the side, waiting for the man to rise again, waiting to see if the blow had killed him the way it should have.

But rise he did, slowly but surely all the same. He advanced with a growl, jaws snapping. The jaguar moved quickly, though the speed of the man surprised him a little. Rather than latching onto his throat, those jaws found his shoulder, and the animal yowled as the teeth sank in. He bucked, rising up on his hind legs and using his front ones to claw at the man. Shifting into a position that was uncomfortable, but effective, he attempted to lock his own jaws around the man’s throat, intending to pull him loose and shake him.

He felt no pain as the jaguar swiped at him again, those teeth clamped down on the animal’s shoulder and not letting go even as claws dug into his back. Shirt torn to pieces, blood dripping down his charged body, Ford paid no mind to any of it while he did his best to not lose his grip on the flesh he so desperately wanted to tear loose. His own fingers clawed at the animal in and attempt to tear the arm from its body but the jaguar’s jaws bit down on his neck making it harder for him to keep his own teeth dug.

It didn’t stop his mindless ass from trying.

Even as teeth dug into his jugular he was chomping down on the jaguar. Blood filled his mouth with one more swipe of his jaw, Ford tearing away a small amount of flesh. A fraction of satisfaction filled him, spurring him forward even more to try and fill the void in his stomach that was only getting worse by the second. One hand came up to dig his fingers into the wound and pull to make it wider, tearing a larger chunk of the animal's body off to bring it to his mouth.

Teeth tore flesh away from his body, and the jaguar yowled in pained rage. Fingers tore at the wound, trying to pry more flesh away. There was no more time for games, no more playing with his food; the jaguar needed to finish the job, or risk falling the way the dead balam he’d come upon the man killing had before him. He snapped his jaw down on the hand as it moved to the man’s mouth, teeth tearing through flesh and bone as he moved to remove the offending limb from the body.

The man tasted like rot. The blood that found his tongue wasn’t sweet, the way it was meant to be. It was a bitter sludge, something that only served to make the jaguar angrier. With the man’s hand still trapped in his jaws, he flung his head to the side and released, throwing the man away from him. Before he could rise once more, the jaguar pounced, teeth going for his skull this time.

A snarl left Ford’s lips as the jaguar’s teeth dug into his hand, the zombie not having gotten the flesh he had craved so badly. He was trying to yank it back out, his skin tearing with each pull of his arm, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was tasting the jaguar again. The feral cry didn’t ring out until Ford was thrown onto his back, closed hand that caged the jaguar’s flesh hanging from his wrist by only a few tendons. He wasn’t even paying attention to the cat, his other hand desperately prying fingers open to go for the pound of flesh still within them.

He’d just gotten another taste of his meal when the weight of the jaguar was on him again but Ford didn’t have time to react before those ferocious teeth dug into his temples. He tried to wrench himself from the hold, good hand once again reaching for the bleeding exposed muscle of the animal, but it was no use. His body stilled as the jaws clamped down tighter, the sound of his own skull cracking filling his ears before his eyes dimmed. Ford’s mouth kept going, moving slowly, still trying to bite the cat that had a hold on his friend but the rest of his fight was gone.

It was over the moment the jaguar got his jaws around the man’s head. The hand not barely hanging to its wrist continued clawing at his flesh, the mouth snapped uselessly where it hung, but there were few things that could escape a grip as strong as the one boasted in the jaguar’s jaws. Sharp teeth were built to destroy, strong jaws built to crush. Working together, they would do exactly that.

The jaguar tightened his jaw, pressing down, down, down as the skull creaked and cracked. It shattered all at once, a satisfying pop sounding as the jaguar’s jaw closed completely around it, teeth coming together with a snap. More of that bitter sludge coated his tongue, joined now by a gelatinous substance that tasted fatty and faintly sweet, albeit still a bit off from the usual experience. Like his blood, the man’s brain matter wasn’t quite what it should have been. The jaguar released his jaws, allowing the body with its ruined head fall at his feet. The man was unrecognizable now; his head was crushed past the point of looking much like a head at all, his hand still barely hanging on the end of his arm.

None of this mattered much to the jaguar, of course; the cat didn’t recognize the man, even when there was more there to recognize. He cared little for the gruesome husk of something that had once been Felix’s friend. The chaos unfolding around him was far more important. The fire was still raging, and more and more of the people who worked on the farm were beginning to look as the man had — feral and desperate. Now injured, the jaguar knew he needed to get to safety. Tail swishing behind him, the jaguar made a beeline towards the woods. There was little left for him here now, if there had ever been anything at all.

#Threads #Thread: Felix #As Ford #How to Lose a Guy #head trauma tw

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howdy-cowpoke · 5 months ago

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TIMING: Current LOCATION: Wicked Wheels PARTIES: Monty (@howdy-cowpoke), Felix (@recoveringdreamer), & Daisy SUMMARY: Daisy talks Monty and Felix into joining her for a rollerskating outing. It goes about as well as you’d expect! CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

—

He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d let himself get dragged into this plan—maybe it was Daisy’s ability to charm the socks off of damn near anybody, her winning smile, her infectious, upbeat attitude. Maybe it was the way Kaden had gently encouraged him, wanting the cowboy to spend more time with friends. Monty hadn’t realized he was starting to wall himself off again, but when confronted with the evidence, he couldn’t really deny it. Besides, Felix was going to be there! Monty loved Felix, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the shifter would be equally as ill-equipped for an activity such as this, so he wouldn’t be alone in his floundering.

They were going rollerskating. The concept was wildly foreign, first coming to life in a decade when Monty was, suffice it to say, off the grid. And even if he’d been around other people then, it was a very social thing—not something he would have had an interest in. But that had changed, right? He wanted to be social now. He didn’t want to be scared. So he agreed, however reluctantly, to join Daisy and Felix on their trip to the skating rink. She drove them from the farm into town, Monty feeling weird sitting in the backseat with just her driving but knowing that it was only until they went to pick up Felix. As they rolled to a stop in Worm Row, Monty perched himself on the center seat in the back of the truck. “Mi hermana, you are going to have to be my balancing stick or something,” he complained with a gentle chuckle, hoping that she realized she was dealing with a true novice. But of course she did, and she still let out a warm laugh.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll hold on to ya!” They both looked over as Felix appeared beside the truck and the passenger side door opened, Monty offering a small wave and a nervous smile.

—

Felix’s experience with rollerblading was… limited, to say the least. It had been a pretty big fad in the nineties, though Felix had really been too young to be the target audience for an activity mostly marketed as a way for teenagers to spend their time. Their sister had been more into it, skilled and quick on her feet, but Felix had always been clumsy. They’d gone to a few birthday parties at roller rinks, but they spent most of those afternoons hugging the wall or playing the arcade games that tended to be shoved off into corners. Despite their catlike reflexes, Felix was… clumsier than their siblings. They knew the moment Daisy extended this invitation that they’d spend most of the afternoon on their ass, trying to get their feet back underneath them.

They said yes anyway.

There was no universe in which they’d say no to an afternoon of hanging out with Daisy and Monty, after all. Felix knew he’d have a good time at the roller rink, regardless of the bruised bottom they were sure to walk away with. They never regretted hanging out with their friends and, with everything going on recently… they could use a nice afternoon like this. There was nothing but excitement surging in their chest as Daisy pulled up, and they flashed a grin at Monty through the window as they climbed into the truck.

“I’m probably going to fall a lot,” they announced. “I was never very good at rollerblading. I can barely walk without falling! But I think it’ll be fun, anyway.”

—

“Ol’ mister Rivera here was just worryin’ ‘bout the same thing!” Daisy outed Monty, thumbing back at him over her shoulder as she let out another hearty laugh. “Fear not, compadres! You’re gonna be pros by the end of the day, I’ll see to it!” Monty groaned and rolled his eyes, smiling in spite of the teasing.

“You are very confident for someone who has no reason to be.”

“And you oughtta be more confident in yourself, Monty! Shoot, if you can hit a target at two hundred paces while ridin’ full gallop on a horse, you can sure as heck stand up with some wheels on your feet!” Monty paused, then shrugged, grinning over at Felix and clapping a hand to their shoulder.

“We will see, I guess!”

It wasn’t a long drive to the rink, and once they got through the whole rigamarole of getting the correct size rentals, Daisy was showing them where to leave their shoes in the provided cubbies before dragging them both out to the edge of the rink. Walking in the skates wasn’t easy, either, and they were all stumbling up to the opening in the fence. Other rollerskaters whizzed by, making it look terribly easy, and Daisy spun around to face them. “Okay, here we go! Just remember, keep your center of gravity low!” She stepped out into the rink, extending her hands to them so they could each take one. Monty glanced at Felix, nervous but still chuckling breathily.

“Okay, okay,” he complied, opting to go first and get it over with. Reaching across the barrier, he took Daisy’s outstretched hand and put one foot in the rink carefully, wobbled, then lurched his body weight forward to get the other foot in there too before he started doing the splits. Immediately his shoes were trying to go in different directions and he yelped out a laugh, grabbing onto Daisy and letting her lift him back into a straight-legged position.

“There you go! Now hold that,” she told him, looking terribly amused. Turning her attention to Felix, she raised her brows. “Come on, sugar, you next,” she said, holding her hand out again.

—

“I don’t think I’m very good at being a pro,” Felix admitted, a little sheepish. Really, the things that they were good at were so few and far between that they often wondered how much any of them counted for at all. It was easier to imagine Monty mastering roller blades than it was to picture Felix being any good at it themself. After all, Daisy was right in pointing out that the zombie had other talents that might translate to this sort of thing easily enough. Horseback riding probably required more intense balancing skills than roller blading did, didn’t it? And Monty was a pro at that. Literally. It was his job. Felix’s job was…

They shook the thought away. They didn’t want to think about that now, didn’t want to focus on the heavy things when they were trying so hard to find something lighter to carry. They were with their friends, with Monty and with Daisy. They wanted to focus on that instead.

They made idle chatter all the way to the rink, their usual rambling carrying a level of comfort with it that only came when the people they were rambling to were ones they trusted entirely. Once inside the building, they were slow to remove their shoes, still uncertain about the skates. They offered to stand back and guard the shoes — you know, in case there was a shoe thief at the roller rink who might be a little too interested in Monty’s boots — but the idea was quickly shot down and a pair of skates were placed onto the balam’s uncertain feet.

It was a miracle that Felix made it to the rink without falling, arms pinwheeling most of the way to keep them upright. Once at the entrance, they slowly reached out, taking Daisy’s offered hand and squatting down low as he began inching towards the inside of the rink. Watching Monty nearly do the splits did not inspire confidence, but Daisy was encouraging him to move and Felix didn’t want to let her down. They let her pull them into the rink…

And immediately fell flat on their ass. It happened so quickly that Felix didn’t know they were falling at all until they were sitting on the cold, polished floor, blinking up at Daisy. “See,” they said, making no move to get up just yet, “definitely not a pro! There are no pros here, Daisy! Monty almost did the splits!” A kid zoomed by them, spinning to skate backwards and look at them for a moment before turning back around. She looked about eight. Felix sighed.

—

Daisy erupted with laughter as Felix sat there on their bum, shouting about Monty almost having gone down too. She had a way of doing that—laughing when you messed something up in a way that did the opposite of embarrassing you. It just made you want to laugh right along with her, and Monty started giggling in spite of himself, steadying his grip on the woman. “Come on, come on,” he urged Felix, reaching for them. “We will put you in the middle, yes?” Not that he was having much of an easier time of things, but he at least hadn’t fallen yet. Taking Felix’s hand and helping Daisy haul them to their feet, Monty hooked his left arm with Felix’s right, while Daisy did the opposite on the balam’s other side.

“Okay, folks, left foot first!” she instructed, leading with her own and watching their feet. Monty shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other, trying to get his left foot to move out in front of him and failing.

“It won’t go!” he complained with a laugh. Snickering, Daisy went on ahead, pulling Felix after her, who then dragged Monty along in the rear.

“Keep your feet close together, toes pointing forward until you get a feel for it!”

—

“I’m gonna end up dragging you both down,” Felix warned, a brief expression of fear crossing their face as they were pulled to their feet. They were less worried about falling again than they were about their flailing limbs pulling Monty or Daisy or both to the ground alongside them, even if they knew that both the zombies were a lot more durable than Felix themself. There wasn’t much chance of doing actual damage or hurting them, but… the fear of embarrassing them was definitely still there. The fear of upsetting them, the fear of making them not want to hang out with Felix again… there were definitely a lot of fears present. There always were, when Felix was involved.

Both Monty and Daisy had a way of easing them, though. Daisy was offering instruction, sounding just knowledgeable enough to put Felix a little more at ease. And Monty was clumsy enough that Felix didn’t feel like they were the only one who had no idea what they were doing, which helped, too.

“Toes pointing,” they replied dutifully, expression one of utter concentration as they forced their feet to follow along with what their mouth was saying. They stumbled, the arm not holding on to Daisy in a death grip pinwheeling again to maintain their balance. How much would they need to shift to tap into the jaguar’s catlike balance here? It probably wasn’t worth it. Someone would definitely notice if they sprouted a tail.

—

As predicted, Daisy had way too much confidence in the people she’d chosen to bring along with her for this. Monty was barely keeping his feet pointed forward as she’d instructed, and when Felix started to lose their balance and ripped their arm away from him to try and catch themself, Monty let out a barking laugh. “¡Oye! You’ve got a straggler!”

Daisy looked back over her shoulder to see the cowboy slowing down and drifting away behind them, and braced her free hand against Felix’s bicep. “We’re swingin’ back around, hold on!” With that, she repositioned her feet and pulled them in a tight circle, making sure to keep a firm grip on Felix while the other arm reached out for Monty. Pushing on his shoulder, she rotated him on the spot and then took his hand, turning them around once more to match the flow of the other skaters.

They made one full loop without anyone falling down or getting lost when Daisy decided to kick it up a notch. “Okay, we’re gonna pick up some speed now, ya ready?” It didn’t matter if they were, because she was doing it anyway—one of them on each arm, throwing her weight forward and taking longer, faster strides.

—

Monty sailed away, like a very sad, slow-moving life raft lost at sea. Felix made a grabbing motion towards the cowboy, but they were too far away to achieve anything more than throwing off their own balance and nearly falling again. Daisy, predictably, was the only member of the trio not at a complete loss when it came to keeping her feet beneath her.

Luckily for all of them, though, Daisy was smart, and carried with her a ‘no man left behind’ kind of attitude. She pulled Felix around to circle back to grab Monty, who she was able to rotate in a similar manner. “Did you want to go rollerblading just to show off? Is that what this is? Are you secretly a rollerblading professional? You should’ve told us, Daisy!” Their tone was light, as close to ‘teasing’ as Felix came. It wasn’t a side to them anyone who wasn’t close to the balam saw.

As Daisy began to pick up speed, so did Felix’s heartbeat. “I — I’m not sure this is a great idea!” They cast a nervous glance to Monty. “We were barely staying upright at slow speeds, Daisy! This is probably going to end with somebody breaking their neck!”

—

She was laughing as Felix accused her of being a pro, shrugging and giving a cheeky grin in response—it was a little true. She’d been part of a roller derby league back when she was alive, at home in Arkansas, so she could probably skate circles around a lot of the people here… but that just meant she was fit to teach! “I missed it, and I wanted to take my very best friends to experience the joy of skatin’!” she argued jokingly. “Don’t call me out like that!”

As they got going a little faster and Felix voiced their unease, Monty was quick to chime in with his agreement. “I think they’re right, Dais! You—” The woman gave him a look and he couldn’t help but laugh. “What?!”

“Both of y’all are a couple’ah babies,” she teased, nodding as someone passed them by. “We ain’t even the quickest here! Settle down, you’re both gonna be fine… I wouldn’t let nothin’ happen to ya!” She was, to her credit, much stronger than she appeared, and Monty felt compelled to believe her. Anyway, it was kind of exhilarating not plodding along at a snail’s pace. He kept trying to match her foot work, and after a few more laps of the rink, was finally maybe starting to get a feel for it.

He looked past Daisy to Felix, nodding his head at them. “How you doing over there, amigo?”

—

It seemed Daisy really did have some rollerskating experience, a fact that startled a laugh from Felix. “I knew it!” They hadn’t. They’d been able to tell that Daisy was a better skater than Monty or themself, of course, but… well, that wasn’t saying much, was it? Monty looked a little like a baby deer just learning to walk, and Felix was holding onto Daisy’s arm for dear life now, terrified to fall on their ass again the moment they let it go. Most people here were better skaters than the two of them.

But that wouldn’t stop Daisy from picking up the speed. Felix was of the thinking that they were going way too fast now, something they suspected Monty might agree with. Anxiety thrummed in the balam’s chest, but they trusted that Daisy wouldn’t actually let them break their neck. Between her and Monty, Felix felt pretty secure in their ability to at the very least live through this rollerblading experience. And it was kind of fun.

Still, there was a hint of panic in his eyes as Monty met them. “I’m pretty sure she’s trying to kill us,” they said, feigning seriousness in a way that was quickly betrayed by a laugh as they spun on their skates.

—

It was good to see Felix laughing, Monty thought. He knew his friend had been having a rough go of it lately, and while he’d not been given all the details (nor would he have pressed for them), he could tell the toll it was taking on them. So he was glad that Daisy was shoving them both rather unceremoniously out of their comfort zones, dragging them along for an afternoon of fun that he had a feeling neither would have ever signed themselves up for if not for someone like her. She had that effect on people, though. She had for as long as Monty had known her.

“I coulda done y'all one worse, you know. If it was winter, I coulda taken you ice skating! Just as hard, but then ya got deadly weapons on your tootsies! This is good practice for when it cools off outside and I take ya,” she added with a mischievous wink. Monty groaned, giving her hand a squeeze.

“You wouldn’t do that to us, would you? To be cold and falling on our behinds?” Not that Monty would really feel either, but it was the principle of the thing. “You are cruel.” Daisy just laughed, steering them around the turn.

“You know what, for that little insult, I’m cuttin’ you free!” Monty’s eyes widened.

“What? No!” Daisy nodded ‘yes!’ and hauled him in front of her, shaking her hand free of his grip and watching him stumble his way forward—he managed to keep upright, but he was flailing. It was hilarious to watch and had the woman cracking up again, doubling over when he went straight into the wall at the rink’s top curve.

“That’s for all the times you kicked the soccer ball straight into my gut, pal!” Her attention fell to Felix now, and she grinned. “Don’t worry, darlin’. I’d never be so mean to you. Monty just had it comin’.”

—

“Daisy, I’d cut my arm off, somehow!” Felix gasped, scandalized at the idea of going ice skating. Daisy was right about one thing — this was far less intimidating. Felix preferred wheels on their feet to blades, especially with how clumsy they tended to be. They hoped they could talk Daisy out of the ice skating idea before winter came along. They had plenty of time to achieve the goal, of course — months and months of pleading. They were pretty sure, based on Monty’s protests, that he’d help them out. Surely if the pair of them begged enough, Daisy would have mercy, right?

Wrong, maybe. Mercy didn’t usually begin with loosing someone out into the wild on their own. Felix made a grab for Monty as he sailed by, but there was no catching him. He was on his own now, flailing helplessly in the wild. Felix would remember him fondly.

They turned back to Daisy, wide-eyed, but she assured them that they’d meet no such fate. Maybe they could convince her to only take Monty ice skating, then. He’d probably understand it! Sometimes, it kind of had to be ‘every person for themself.’ Monty would take one for the team, wouldn’t he?

“You don’t think he’s going to fall, do you?” The young girl from earlier had caught up to Monty now, and was skating around him in a way Felix couldn’t help but think might be a little menacing. “He’s going to get bullied.”

—

“Nah… he’ll be fine. He’s a tough cowboy,” Daisy assured Felix, in spite of the way the child was circling Monty a little bit like a shark in the water. She smirked at him while they skated past, turning her back on him as the bend in the rink moved them away from him.

Monty, for his part, had pushed right back off the wall as soon as he’d hit it, now moving backwards and at a much slower rate than anyone around him. The girl from earlier was skating literal circles around him, flustering him even further as he tried to get himself facing the right direction. He came to a stop, other people giving him a wide berth, and slowly started to turn himself around. The girl giggled, pulling a lollipop out of her mouth as she skated sideways in front of him (how was she doing that?). “You need a push?” she asked, and while that would be helpful, her tone sounded… less than pure of heart. Still, Monty wasn’t sure he could get going again on his own, so he just shrugged and nodded. The girl swung around him again to get behind him, popping the sucker back into her mouth and giving him a rough shove forward. “Move your feet, not your arms, dummy!” she chastised him with a cackle. Right. Yes. Focus. He could do this, Daisy had been right—he had good balance, he just wasn’t used to using his feet in this way.

Taking her very unkind advice, Monty pushed off with the toe of one skate, hating the idea of lifting that foot off the ground to move it forward but doing it anyway. And wouldn’t you know it, it worked. He was moving. He hunkered down and tried to put more effort into it to get going faster and catch up to them. He still didn’t know how to turn, but he was going to cross that bridge when he came to it.

Daisy glanced over her shoulder and broke out into a grin. “Hey, there, see! There he goes! I knew he could do it, n’ so can you!”

—

The little girl was circling Monty, and Felix thought they understood why so many horror movies featured evil children. They thought the girl was a demon, maybe. And they didn’t have anything against demons as a whole — they were sure there were demons out there who were very nice people, really! — but they felt a little uneasy at the thought of a demon skating around their friend when he was already struggling to stay upright. They couldn’t hear the conversation at hand, but they let out a small, startled noise as the girl put her hands on Monty’s back and shoved.

For a moment, they held their breath. They were pretty sure Monty was going to fall — the little maybe-demon’s advice didn’t seem like very good advice, in Felix’s humble opinion — and they were ready to… yell encouraging words in his direction when it happened. They still didn’t think they could move, really. Not without Daisy’s help, and they weren’t sure Daisy would help Monty unless he was actually in trouble. And, possible demonic encounters aside, his predicament really didn’t seem so bad. In fact, it kind of looked like he was… maybe figuring it out?

“Hey, good job, Monty!” Felix cheered, though his body remained stiff and glued to Daisy’s side. They turned back to Daisy as she spoke, eyes wide. “Oh, um, I don’t know about that. I think it’s, uh, actually, I think it’s way more fun if I stand by the wall! The wall is where the party is, Dais. I love the wall.”

—

“Well baby, the wall don’t love you back,” Daisy argued with a grin. “C’mon. I won’t let go, but I’m gonna give you a little space.” She unhooked their arms, instead taking Felix’s hand and swerving away from him to put a bit of space between them. Giving their hand a squeeze, the zombie still smiled at them. “I want you to try n’ do what Monty—” Speak of the devil, here he came, streaking past them as they entered the curve and bodychecking the wall. Daisy laughed aloud again, gesturing at the cowboy who was shaking his head, stunned. “Lean onto the inner foot! Your feet are the reins, Monty! Put more force in the direction you wanna turn!” She was content to let him figure it out on his own, looking back to Felix. “See? The wall’s a bastard. As I was sayin’, I want you to do what he was doin’ before he got familiar with that barrier. Push off with the left foot, lift, set it down, push off with the right, lift… et cetera! Just mimic my feet. You’ll get this!”

Monty wobbled his way back into the flow of people, using Daisy’s advice to successfully get himself around the turn. Okay, maybe this wasn’t so bad, even if he was something of a klutz. He’d catch up again before they hit the next turn, he hoped.

—

“Oh, I don’t know, I think he does. I think he’s really — you know, we get along really well, me and the wall. I think —” Daisy was slowly unhooking their arms, and Felix made a small noise of protest as she grabbed their hand instead and swerved to put some space between them. Immediately, he felt off-balance. They spread their legs apart, looking dangerously close to doing the splits as the arm not holding on to Daisy’s hand in a death grip shot out in search of something to grab and found only empty air. Monty sailed by directly into the wall just as Daisy mentioned that Felix ought to do what he was doing, and Felix stared at her with wide, nervous eyes. “I don’t think I want to do what Monty is doing! What Monty is doing looks like it wouldn’t be very fun!” Still, they tried to do what Daisy was saying, tried to mimic her feet.

As Monty slowly approached, Felix managed to move about an inch on their own. This victory filled them with a steady flow of unearned confidence, and they shot Daisy a grin. “Hey! This isn’t so bad. Maybe I’m getting the hang of—” Their hand slipped from Daisy’s grip, and they began moving steadily backwards… directly towards Monty, still scrambling and struggling behind them.

—

Daisy whipped around as soon as Felix’s hand left hers, watching them backpedal (literally) straight for Monty. Who was… not paying attention to where he was going, focused entirely on his feet and trying to get them to do what he wanted. She covered her mouth to hide her giggling as she watched the pair collide slowly, Monty’s surprise at the sudden invasion of his personal space turning to laughter as he realized it was Felix, who had somehow skated backward into him. “Hey, showoff, now you’re going backwards, huh?” he teased, grabbing onto Felix to hopefully keep both of them from falling, arms wrapped around their middle. It wasn’t helping much, he could feel his feet starting to try and go in different directions again. “Oh no.” That was about all he could get out before there was a brief moment of panicked kicking, and then the both ended up on the floor. Monty laid back on the floor, throwing his arms up in the air. People skated around them, laughing at the display, but Monty didn’t feel very embarrassed by it. It was kind of funny. He saw Daisy out of the corner of his eye as she circled them, doing her best to mask her amusement.

“Okay, folks, maybe it’s time for a snack break, yeah? We’ll take another crack at this once you’re all juiced up.” There were all sorts of concessions at the rink, and while Daisy and Monty wouldn’t get any actual nutrition from it, the act of eating with friends was still always worthwhile. Plus, if they used enough hot sauce, it could taste good!

—

Felix wanted to call out a warning to Monty, they really did. Unfortunately, panic gripped their throat too tightly to allow their voice an exit, leading to the slow motion collision. Monty gripped them tightly and, for a moment, Felix thought this might be a good idea. “I don’t know how to stop,” they admitted, just before Monty’s idea proved less good than their initial assumption. They went one way, Monty went the other, and they both wound up in a tangled mess of limbs on the skate rink floor. Felix stared up at the disco ball spinning on the ceiling. The little girl from earlier jumped over their arm as she passed, landing in a crouch and spinning around to look at them as she skated backwards. Felix wondered if she was born a demon, or if she’d been possessed by one.

Laughter slowly rose up from his stomach, traitorously escaping through his lips. Felix could admit, on some level, that it was a little funny. They were so bad at this, and so was Monty. It was hard not to be amused at just how poorly two fully grown adults could manage to rollerblade.

“A snack is a good idea,” Felix agreed, propping themself up on their elbows. “Anything that gets these skates off my feet, Daisy! I’m sorry for whatever I did to deserve this!” Their tone made it clear that it was in jest, though the hand they held out for Daisy to take to haul them to their feet was a serious request. There was no way Felix was getting up on their own here.

—

“I do not like that little girl,” Monty laughed, matching Felix’s energy when they couldn’t help but chuckle as well. He watched, comically forlorn there on the floor, as Daisy helped Felix get to their feet and then reached for him. Huffing out a breath as he was hauled to his feet, he didn’t protest the arm that snaked around his middle to pin him against Daisy’s side, just as she’d done to their friend on her opposite side.

“Well, y’all tried somethin’ new, and that’s what matters!” Daisy was all grins, probably feeling pretty good about herself for being able to skate circles around them both, literally and figuratively. Monty found that he didn’t much like not being good at something that could be seen as competitive, but at the same time, he’d been too flabbergasted by his own inability to stay upright to really get upset—and Felix being just as bad had certainly helped. No, it’d been stupid but still fun, and he decided that after a break, he was going to get back out there and try it again. Maybe he’d wait for that little girl to go home first, though…

#. thread ;#. with ; felix mendoza #. i get knocked down ;

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faoighiche · 3 months ago

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Hands That Bind | Felix & Burrow

PARTNER : @recoveringdreamer TIMING : Current. LOCATION : Grit Pit. SUMMARY : Burrow sees one of Felix's fights and gets an idea. WARNINGS : Under skin.

Burrow had never seen the jaguar so fully. It was always concealed behind a layer of human skin, like a cocoon refusing to separate. That skin still clung to the beast, but not so tightly at the times before. It took her a hard look to even recognize Felix: the parts of him peeking out between patches of fur and claws. Claws she had only seen meager hints of their power. A simple threat display; a means to hold onto to prey; these were nothing to the brutality displayed. The claws sliced through flesh as easily as paper — sliced through the same that held it back. Metamorphosis had been completed. The beast was born. A flash of golden fur burst out, only to just as quickly be stained in red.

Was the other… dead? Burrow steadied herself for the cold soon to follow. Her heart raced, as if its warmth could ever compete against that icy grip. But it never came. This was not another failure deep in the woods. This was a basement full of clamoring bodies, with the scent of blood and sweat and booze, and cheering. So much cheering. All for the stained beast. She, too, was swayed by that excitement. She writhed through the crowd, sliding passed body after body so she could get closer to that magnificent creature. She wondered if it would recognize her, if their eyes met.

Burrow would never know. The beast retreated into the human, leaving nothing of its existence except for the blood it had slain. A moment passed and finally eyes did meet. While the jaguar likely would not have recognized her, Felix surely did. She lifted her hand, two fingers curling up and down in a wave. She mouthed a simple, Hello.

They were supposed to put on a good show. That was what Leo had told them, with thinly veiled threats and a too-tight grip on their shoulder. There was a crowd tonight, and that meant there was no time for Felix’s “pathetic whining,” as Leo called it. They were supposed to put on a good show, and that meant they were supposed to shift. Leo gave instructions that were clear enough; shift enough so that the jaguar had more control than Felix did, but not so much that people couldn’t tell that it was a shifter instead of an animal doing the fighting. Apparently, he’d gotten feedback that people didn’t like feeling as though they were watching animals fight; some found it cruel. There was something laughable about that, that seeing animals fight evoked fears of cruelty but seeing people fight was fine. Felix tried not to think about it. It wasn’t like it changed anything.

Instead, they did the only thing they could do. They shifted as much as they could without losing control entirely, though the control they maintained was a slippery thing. It slid through their fingers more than once, their claws coming back with more blood on them than they would have liked. They were less aware than they wanted to be; the jaguar was the one pulling the shots, and they both knew it. That was why the fight was such a bloody one, why their opponent fell still at the end of it while Felix was pulled away. They forced the jaguar down, shifting back into themself and hating the way they were covered in blood. All they wanted was to get to the showers and wash it away.

But as they turned, their eyes met another familiar pair. Their interactions with Burrow had been brief, but pleasant. They didn’t think she belonged here. (They didn’t think anyone belonged here.) She waved and mouthed hello, and Felix’s eyes widened, anxiety thrumming in their chest like a second heart. They swallowed, inclining their head towards the door to the locker room in a quiet plea. Come with me. They needed to warn her away.

Burrow’s eyes followed their direction, widening when the location was spotted. Usually she had to sneak her way into such places. Invitations usually meant a lack of fun and excitement, though she was experiencing enough of both amongst the crowd. The smell of fresh blood, the clamoring for more to be spilled, all paired with a pack of unfamiliar bodies looming above her. It was best not to test her luck too much. So, she moved over to someone she knew. She weaved through what little space was left between the crowd. Curling and twisting, by torsos and limbs and even a pair of legs, she eventually made her way to the locker room.

Burrow scanned the place immediately. A new place to explore — a new place to pilfer. Though, she did not let her examination run its usual course. She had just watched Felix and jaguar, possibly, kill someone. And there she was, alone with them… mostly. There were rustlings and murmurs of others nearby, though she doubted they would be much help to her. Felix presented themself as a helpful and kind person, and the idea did not sting like a lie, but she knew how often looks were deceiving. And she had just met, fully and unabashedly, the beast underneath. What a shame its power was wasted in such a place. “Why are we… here? Why are you here? Why do you —” What was the proper term? ‘Work’ did not seem right. “— perform here?”

They ducked into the locker room, and no one questioned them. People didn’t often speak to Felix here; Wyatt was the only one who really spent much time with them and, after everything, they thought it might be better that way. It was so much easier to fight someone when you’d never sat down and had a conversation with them, so much easier when they disappeared from the roster with little explanation. It was easier to do things like this, too. Felix made their way over to one of the benches, ignored by the scattered fighters who were either preparing for their next fight or gathering their things to head home following their last one. He sat down, knee bouncing as he stared at the door.

The wait wasn’t a long one; mere minutes after they met Burrow’s eye in the crowd, her form appeared in the doorway as she ducked through it. Felix studied her instinctively. She was unhurt, and that was good. They wanted to make sure it stayed that way. He sighed as she approached, jaw tightening as she launched into a flurry of questions. They’d been expecting that, though they couldn’t answer most of them. Their contract demanded tight lips, and while they’d managed to say enough for a few people to understand their situation, they weren’t sure they could do it for Burrow. “I’m here because I… work here.” They winced at her word for it — perform. They didn’t like it, but they didn’t like anything about their situation here. “I’m — I have to. I have a contract.” That was something they’d learned the bind would allow them to say, and it was close enough to the truth that they didn’t hate saying it. “But you shouldn’t be here. It’s — It’s really dangerous here.”

There were no obvious hints to the situation Burrow had stumbled upon. Tight lips weren’t exactly rare for contracts, especially those crafted in such environments. But she had been crafted only knowing of one type. The type that would have a person doing anything, if they were not careful with their words. Felix may have a beast inside, but he was still human, and humans never respected honesty until it was too late. “Is it a ‘contract’ of words or paper?” Is that why any of them were there, these great beasts thrown together in an open cage? What a waste of it all. Binding an army just to become play things for money — letting oneself be beaten and slain for the wealth of others. Felix was not free from her judgment. He had agreed to this arrangement, after all. Hopefully it taught them not to waste their words. If only it had happened before they had wasted their power.

“I am aware of the dangers here. It is very obvious. I have eyes and ears and… a nose.” The thing wrinkled as another unpleasant odor filled the air. Of course, knowing such dangers wasn’t enough to dissuade Burrow. The whole world was dangerous for a parasite like her. If she were to avoid every dangerous situation, she would never leave her bundle of blankets again.

Her question surprised them, though maybe it shouldn’t have. Felix knew Burrow wasn’t human, even if they’d never been entirely sure what she was. It made sense that she’d know about the non-human world, didn’t it? Maybe she’d been trapped in fae deals herself a time or two. Looking away, Felix sighed. “Words,” they replied carefully, testing the waters. The bind didn’t react; the answer was just vague enough to keep them from actively going against it. They made a note of this, though they knew it was the kind of thing that would only be useful when talking to people who knew of fae binds. There was some shame in the confession, though; Felix knew they were at fault for their situation, knew that nothing had been done to him that he hadn’t agreed to, even if they hadn’t known exactly what it was they were doing at the time. Despite reassurances from their friends, they’d always known who was to blame for the mess they were living.

“Right,” they agreed, because she was right about all of that. The Grit Pit didn’t hide its unsavoriness very well. “But, I mean, it’s — If they see you wandering around, they won’t… They take advantage of people here. They — trap people.” Their stomach churned, as if in warning. They were really testing the edge of their bind now. If they weren’t careful, they’d face consequences. “So you probably shouldn’t be here. Because they’ll take advantage of you, too.”

Burrow had heard those sentiments before. Taking advantage, trapping, all common misconceptions of the humans. Perhaps if one were to stare at the pointed jaws of a bear trap and slam their foot down, then yes, they were trapped. But only because they accepted it. Binds had two ends, needing two knots to be complete. She doubted Felix would understand. But what they did understand, that the binds were a warning, is what she focused on. It was sweet, that they thought they were shooing her away from a dreary fate. Because they were sweet, such a sweet host, that deserved better than… this. Deserved better than the fae who only knew how to merely play with their things. And she would greatly enjoy taking one of those toys away.

Burrow waved his concern away, using the same hand to fetch out a notepad from one of her pockets. She did not feel the burn of a nearby fae, but that did not mean she trusted those lurking nearby, either. Perhaps they were bound to stop what she was about to propose. Perhaps Felix had that same leash. Still, she quickly wrote down her thoughts. Silent words, undetected by the sensitive ears of a jaguar or other beasts roaming the halls. She handed the note to Felix, which read: I know the binds very well. I might be able to help you. She then handed him her pencil.

She didn’t seem concerned, and fear and frustration curled together like two intertwined strings in his gut. Were they doing a bad job at explaining things? Probably. The cruel nature of the Grit Pit meant that Felix was unable to fully explain any of it, even if they’d been better with words. They couldn’t save anyone; they couldn’t even save themself. How could they properly warn Burrow away when any warning they might have had was locked behind the chains of the bind? How did they have any hope of keeping her from a fate they couldn’t even untangle themself from? Felix often felt useless; now was no exception.

Burrow pulled out a notebook, and Felix’s internal spiral halted a little at the confusion of the gesture. He watched her scribble down words, glancing around. It was smart, they thought, to be more subtle. There were no handlers in here at the moment, but they knew most of the other fighters weren’t their biggest fan. It was bad enough that Felix was good in a fight and had a habit of beating the people they were put up against, but the hostility towards them had grown since the stunt with Wyatt and the antifreeze in the coffee. Most of the people in here would sell Felix out in a heartbeat in return for very little. They reached out and took the notepad, eyes darting across the page to read her words. Their breath caught in their throat, hand tightening around the pencil. Carefully, they wrote, How? They knew it was likely futile, but… curiosity remained.

How… The single word managed to carry so many multitudes. Too many for Burrow to parse through without questions of her own. Binds had two ends, and she had yet to meet the other half. The half who knew how to undo the knots and unfurl the string from Felix. A string she doubted he was able to speak of in detail. She had learned long ago how eager the humans were to complain of the binds, yet that usual yappering was absent from Felix. It was likely another part of the contract. A typical arrangement, especially when one knew how to tie the binds well. The stranger must be quite proficient, considering all the shuffling and murmuring she heard within the walls of the locker room. Those fellow souls with invisible leashes

Burrow tapped her pencil against her lips, her eyes tracing those three letters. How. How to begin, that was her first focus. She needed to understand how the other half fit to solve this puzzle. Her pencil returned to the paper. I need to learn about who has you bound. I assume you are not able to tell me about them, but I would be glad if you proved me wrong. Amongst the hidden whispers of her worms, a plan was starting to form. Her lips curled. We are very good at watching people. We will study them. The smile remained as she handed the note back to Felix.

They watched her face, afraid to hope for anything substantial. Hadn’t people offered to help them before? Wyatt and Zane had tried, and it had only made their situation worse. Felix wasn’t sure they should even accept her offer, wasn’t sure they should allow Burrow to put herself on the line when she didn’t even know him very well. This could very well end badly for them both, and Felix knew that. But… She knew about binds in a way Wyatt and Zane hadn’t. She might understand, a little better than they had, what it would take to free Felix from his binds. Maybe it was okay to try, just one more time. And if it didn’t work, if it went wrong… Felix could fall on whatever sword they needed to in order to make sure Burrow got out unscathed. He was sure of it.

They leaned forward as she passed the paper back, eyes darting across the page so quickly that they nearly missed out on the actual words written there. They swallowed at the first sentence, nodded at the second. They couldn’t tell her any details, couldn’t go into how they’d been bound, and maybe that was for the better. He wasn’t sure how inclined she’d be to help if she knew the full story, if she knew just how much of it was Felix’s fault. The rest of the words confused them a little, their brow furrowing as they read. Taking the pencil, they carefully scrawled out a simple response: We?

Though one letter less, this word contained even more. It held Burrow’s entire soul and the reason for her existence. It was why she continued, day after day. It was why she had stayed to help a person she barely knew. For them, for us, for we. Parasites and guardian entwined into a single force. They were everywhere: deep in the soil and high in the leaves. Even in breaths and flesh. She could feel such inside Felix. Her pair had blossomed into a family; a whole writhing of happy worms. She smiled. What a good host. It is best you do not know right now, her response began. I do not know if your bind will interfere. A risk too great with her worms involved. She knew well how the fae responded to her kind. She would not let loose lips expose her precious ones to their cruelty.

Her worms would stay hidden in that kind host, listening in wait for the fae to expose themself. I need you to get the fae to verbally remind you what your bind demands, the sentence began. Protests or idleness, Burrow did not care which course Felix chose. They would know better than her what would cause a reaction. Her sentence continued, or be present when they bind another. I assume you all have the same or similar binds. Assumptions, assumptions. She was making a lot of those in this conversation. A situation she preferred to avoid, but Felix’s brief replies were proof enough that the bind leashed his tongue as much as the rest of him. Her questions would continue to swell with no direction. She finished with a final, We will be listening.

There were still so many questions. Who was she working with? Why was she willing to help? It wasn’t as if Burrow and Felix were friends, wasn’t as if they knew one another particularly well. They’d teamed up a time or two, sure, but that was the way things went in this town. People came together to accomplish common goals, to remain alive and upright and okay, but they didn’t always align when those goals were complete. At best, you might find a new friend out of the ordeal. At worst, you might decide the person who’d helped you was an enemy instead. But rarely did things like this come of it. Rarely did Felix find people willing to help them who actually understood what they were getting into. Burrow seemed to know. And it made sense that she didn’t want to share information with him; he could be a liability, couldn’t he? If Leo demanded answers, would Felix be able to lie? Their ex still had at least one unused thanks stored away. They didn’t want to risk Burrow or whoever it was she was working with.

Still, there was this uncertainty clinging to their skin. How will you know? They barely stopped themself from asking aloud, had to remind themself to wait until the pad of paper was passed back to them instead. Do you have a microphone or something? I’m — I’d like to know how you’re listening in. I have — I mean, I talk to other people in here, too. If she had listening devices in the locker room — something that would have been impressive, given the fact that they’d been speaking to her the entire time she’d been in here — Felix wanted to at least be able to warn Wyatt about it. He deserved to know that kind of thing.

Burrow frowned. She had made herself very clear that she wanted to remain unclear. The reason was something she could not reveal to Felix. Her worms may still flourish inside them, but she doubted it was done so with knowledge. That was always the problem. Her parasites needed to be hidden in order to survive. To explain her plan would mean exposing her kin to that problem. Felix would destroy the very worms that are trying to destroy his bind. Though, a part of her did consider it. He seemed so kind, after all. The child inside her, the one that still hoped and dreamed, wondered if things could be different. Was Felix different? But she had grown up. She knew the sweetest smiles could hold the cruelest hearts. She would not be so careless.

Burrow was stuck in the unknown, so Felix would carry that same burden. It was an equal exchange. I do not have any microphones in this building. It is complicated. It is too complicated to explain with this note. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Hopefully this would sate their inquiries for the moment. When will you get the fae to reveal the information on the bind? She had to ensure that she was nearby. Her worms did not care to learn human languages. Nor did they need to, for she was the bridge between that gap. They collected the sounds and she gave them their meanings. She only needed to be close enough to collect.

Complicated. It seemed a fair enough answer, though Felix couldn’t help but wonder what might be hiding beneath the word. If there were no microphones, how could Burrow hear what was being said? There was so much they didn’t know about the world, even now; they knew of shifters and hunters and mediums, but they didn’t think Burrow fell into any of those categories and they didn’t know much of the world outside of them. Maybe there was some supernatural species that could somehow hear conversations they weren’t present for; Felix made a note to ask Wyatt or Anita or Teagan. They all seemed fairly well versed in this kind of thing or, at the very least, more knowledgeable than he was.

For now, though, they only nodded. Burrow wanted to help them, and they thought she might be able to do something. Maybe not anything substantial — they were beginning to feel as though they would never truly be freed from their bind — but maybe she could at least offer him some kind of reprieve. If nothing else, maybe she could give them something they could use to help Wyatt. That would be good, too. I can try sometime this week, they offered carefully. They’re always recruiting new people. I can be there for that, or I can get my handler to repeat it back to me. He had to be careful, even writing, not to reveal anything the bind wanted secret. Even the vaguest of descriptions seemed to tug uncomfortably on their gut.

The explanation, or lack of one, proved to be sufficient. Burrow did enjoy a good prying, but not the sort that prevented her own. She was the very best — they were the very best. Her soul vibrated with a silent call. To the surface, send the babes to the surface. Her worms listened, as keenly one listened to their own thoughts. The worm babes would be sent: to the lungs, to the mouth, and back down to their lovely home. The babes would squirm, so small as to be mistaken for a droplet of saliva, under Felix’s tongue. Hiding in wait for another tongue to reveal its secrets to them. The babes would continue to travel and hide and wait until they heard that secret. Day after day, just as Burrow would continue to return. She would hide in the crowd. Just another face, with eyes on the fights, but ears to her worms.

That was all yet to be done. In the moment, her worms prepared. Burrow prepared too. Prepared to leave. She had learned to anticipate her presence, when known, had a short expiration date. The more she sensed the shuffling bodies — heard their breaths and smelled their stench — she knew that clock was ticking down. She also did not want them shuffling too close, peering behind their backs and revealing their own secret. She was not opposed to adding others to the plan. It would satisfy her deeply to add more of the fae’s toys to her own collection. But the plan was still too young to add more complications. So, she closed the notebook, and tucked its contents and secrets back into her pocket. With a final nod to Felix, she headed to the exit.

It seemed she had little more to say on the matter. Burrow, Felix had learned through their small interactions, was a person of very few words. It was a strange comparison to Felix themself, who often rambled even when they had nothing to say simply because the sound of their own voice provided them with a comfort they couldn’t quite find within the silence. Maybe it was for the best that Burrow was done speaking now; other fighters were beginning to flitter in and out, and more than a few passed a strange look towards Felix’s companion. Her presence couldn’t remain unquestioned for long and, the more it was scrutinized, the less likely it was for this idea to end with anything more than failure.

Felix returned her nod with one of their own as she turned. He’d do what she’d requested, the moment there was an opportunity to do it. And when she had the information she needed, and when they were far from the listening ears of the Grit Pit, they’d ask more about her plan. They’d find out what she needed to get them out — to get Wyatt out, too, to get as many fighters out as they could. It was a pipe dream; they knew that. Odds of its success were so, so low. But maybe Felix had to try, anyway. Maybe trying could at least make them feel a little less hopeless.

They watched Burrow until she disappeared, then turned back towards the showers with a newfound determination. Less hopeless would be nice. Less hopeless would be something. They thought they needed that.

#wickedswriting #thread #thread : felix #ft. felix m.#under skin tw

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gale-gentlepenguin · 2 years ago

Note

if you were to do a ML Fantasy AU, what would everyone (well, main characters at least) be in it? I think Marinette would be a good witch and potioneer while Adrien was forced to join the Royal Guard to protect the royal pain i mean princess Chloe.

Wait... I havent dont an ML fantasy au?

Omg I dont think I have.

I would say yes. I would probably try and make it match the fantasy story in the show with some twists.

Evil father Gabriel

Princess Adrien.

Knight Marinette

But add evil witch Lila and B**** princess Chloé from another kingdom.

Alya being Marinette's trusted companion and advisor.

Luka being the bard singing the adventure.

Kagami the Princess that fell in love with a shape shifter Felix

#ml fantasy au #ml au #miraculous ladybug

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chasseurdeloup · 9 months ago

Text

Fox Paw Faux Pas

TIMING: Before We Begin Again LOCATION: The woods PARTIES: @thunderstroked and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: Kaden finds a certain kitsune stuck in a trap. Mona does her best to communicate with him as they try to help her find her way home CONTENT WARNINGS: head trauma tw (very end/last reply)

The fox clawed at the cage she’d gotten stuck inside. Heart beating fast, she repelled from the edges, as if the metal that touched her skin might somehow singe her fear. A low whine left her as she arched her back against the metal, claws piercing through the small holes of the man-made crate. It was on the smaller side, meant for something the size of a raccoon, maybe. She was going to die here, and it was that spellcaster in the wood’s fault. She’d never see Felix or Inge again, she’d never have her favorite wine– she’d never return the photography studio to Esther. She was done for.

In her panic, she missed the exchange of words– the padding of footsteps. She was shaking violently within the small cage, doing her best to try and claw her way out. Another high pitched whine left her, this time reminiscent of a small child’s scream. Agony washed over her, and panic ensued. Her heart rate picked up and she shoved her shoulder into the opposite side of the cage, gaze leveling with that of a man after a few moments where she lowered herself to the ground, panting heavily. Was he here to kill her? She would burn him, if so. He would release her, and she would burn him, and she would run. She had to. She couldn’t die here. She refused to die here.

—

Weird fox in one of the traps. That was the call Kaden got to animal control. He could only speculate what the fuck that meant in Wicked’s Rest. His questions were met with no real answers like information had been passed third hand to the hunter. Time to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. For all he knew, the fox was just a normal damn fox but was gray or maybe had mange. Hell, it could be a raccoon. Wouldn't surprise him if that was the case. Maybe it was even that fucker that had tormented and evaded him and Cortez a while back. Yeah, no way he’d get that lucky. Time to plan for a raiju. Kaden grabbed his rubber gloves along with the crate and snare from the back of the truck before trekking out into the woods to see what he would find.

The closer he got to the spot in question, the more chills ran down his spine. Kaden furrowed his brows, checking that he was headed in the right direction. Sure was. Great. So he was walking directly towards a monster. Hopefully it was still in that cage.

He spotted the glint of metal before he could see what was waiting for him across the way. Goosebumps covered his arms as he walked closer. Definitely something supernatural. Beast or shifter, surely. Whichever it was, it was panicked and whining. The sound pierced his ears and it was all he could do not to wince. Deep breath. Kaden crouched down to get a better look at the little fox. The little orange fox with a splash of blue fur and two tails.

Yeah, not a fox, then. A kitsune. Kaden sighed, not sure if it was relief or something else that he was releasing. “Hey, hey, calm down,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender as he dropped down to one knee to try and meet the shifter eye to eye. “I know what you are, okay. You’re safe. I promise.” Slowly, he reached his hand out to the cage door, ready to open it. His fingers hesitated to grasp the handle while the kitsune was still so frightened. He knew that he wasn’t dealing with a wild animal, sure, but the same rules still applied. Frightened animals were dangerous to deal with. “You’re going to have to calm down, alright? I don’t want to deal with that fox fire shit today, got it?”

—

I know what you are.

The fox thought briefly to the moment she’d watched Twilight with Inge and the two of them had cackled at the scene splitting between Bella and Edmund– no, Edward. She pressed herself against the metal, ears pinned back as she glowered at the man who appeared. If he knew what she was, either it was by sight or by something else.

His fingers hung around the lock of the cage and the fox watched intently, fur sticking through the holes in the cage as she backed up further. He was speaking to her, acknowledging that he knew what she could do to him– how did he know? Most would see two tails and equate it to something out of mythology, but this person knew past that.

In response to his request, the fox let out another high pitched whine before relaxing slightly. If he tried anything, she would light him up and have no issue doing so– she was not a fighter in the slightest, but there were exceptions to that rule. The fox waited patiently for the door to drop open, and once it did, she rushed out, half-tempted to escape the man, but she turned at the last moment, studying his features. Could he help her if he knew what she was?

—

The fox calmed down just enough that he risked opening the cage door. Kaden expected them to transform back right then and there. He waited and gave the fox a look. “Go on.You don’t have to hide it here. No one around, no cameras. You’re safe.” The kitsune just looked up at him with a blank stare and for a second, he questioned if he was wrong. No, those were two distinct tails. There was no way this was a normal fox. They were a kitsune.

So why weren’t they turning back into a human form? Kaden furrowed his brows and double checked that they were alone. Yeah, very alone, no one else there. Were they shy? Could they not shift while someone was looking at them? Embarrassed? Maybe afraid to reveal their identity.

“I mean it. You can shift back now. I promise, I’m not going to tell anyone or hurt you or anything. And it’s going to be easier to speak to each other, as cute as the fox form is.”

Still, nothing. Was there something he was missing?

Wait, did kitsune keep their clothes when shifting? Werewolves didn’t. Maybe they were worried about being naked in front of a stranger. Kaden shrugged off his jacket and placed it on the ground in front of the kitsune. “Here. I don’t know how much it’ll cover you up but it might help. If that’s the issue.” And if that wasn’t the issue, the ranger was officially at a loss.

—

As much as the fox wanted to shift back and give her thanks and then be on her way, that wasn’t possible. Then again, that might have been stupid of her. What if this person was waiting for her to reveal what she truly looked like, and in turn use that against her? She wouldn’t have risked it, even if she were capable of returning to her human form.

The fox huffed in response to the way he urged her to shift back. She attempted, but there was no puff of smoke, no reveal of who she was beneath the blue and orange fur. The scar that replicated itself in the patterns across her fur burned with frustration– something that typically happened when under duress.

At his insinuation that she might be embarrassed due to the act of being naked, the fox cackled– or, rather, chirped. The idea that she would be embarrassed over her body was laughable, even in her current state. Had he only read about her kind in books? Did he have no idea that she’d keep her clothes? That her shifts weren’t as animalistic as others?

The jacket was now on the ground, though, and the fox committed the scent to memory. She’d follow it after this was said and done and show her appreciation so that she wouldn’t have the guilt looming over her in the form of his help. Though, the only help he’d given her was getting her out of the cage. That was good enough, she decided. The fox watched the man intently before stepping atop his jacket, tails flicking in response to his words. She pawed at the jacket pocket where she felt the weight of a cell phone. Maybe she could use her nose to type something out? Sticks and scrawling words into the dirt hadn’t really helped her case before, but maybe this would work.

—

Did the kitsune just laugh at him? Kaden’s mouth pulled into a thin line and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Couldn’t believe he just got laughed at by a fox. Sure, alright, they were a shifter but all the same. His brow raised as he watched them approach his jacket and… stand on top of it? That wasn’t going to help. What the hell were they doing? “Hey, careful,” he said as soon as she started pawing at it. “Don’t scratch the leather, alright?” As if the jacket wasn’t already well worn and scuffed and scratched in various places. It was the principle of the thing, though.

When he looked down, he saw that the kitsune had wedged his phone out of the pocket. Right. Might have been a smart idea to take that out before handing it to them. Kaden reached down to grab it and looked at the device, unsure of the best way to go about this. It’s not like there was a fox to English translation app he could use. Even if there was, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to figure out how to get it without help from Alex or Mack or even Andy.

It was clear from all the huffing and visible frustration from before that the kitsune wasn’t shifting there and then for whatever reason. But they hadn’t run away. Kaden eyed his phone again. Did they want to communicate? Well, probably, since their current back and forth left a lot to be desired. How were they going to do that with a phone? They still couldn’t talk. Maybe they wanted to call someone? And say what, exactly? He tried to wrap his head around it and remembered that incident at Masque of the Red Death when he was monochromatic and silent. What was her name, the mare, Inge? She’d mentioned using a phone to communicate when silent instead of the whiteboard. Honestly, shame he didn’t have that with him now, it would have helped. Still, maybe she was onto something.

Kaden tapped through the lock screen and found an app that looked like it took notes or something. Either way, seemed like you could type on it. Though he wasn’t sure if the kitsune would have the dexterity with their paws or nose or hell, maybe their tails, to navigate it. He went to set it down but hesitated. He knew there was a way to make things bigger and the buttons larger, mostly because of the number of times he did it by accident. “One second, let me see if I can make this easier,” he said as he desperately flipped through various settings and options. He did what he could to make the text larger and the buttons bigger and hoped it would be enough before placing the phone back on his jacket facing the fox. “Hope this is what you wanted,” he told them as he waited for them to type away.

—

The man took the phone away and the fox let out another annoyed huff. Then again, she wouldn’t be able to do much to unlock it. It wasn’t like she could press his thumb into the home button for him. She watched him expectantly as he seemingly threaded her silent request together.

Just as he was about to return the phone to her, he was saying something else and the fox let out a whine, finally moving off of the man’s jacket. The last thing she wanted to do was scratch up the leather, it did smell authentic, and she knew how pricey they could be. She wouldn’t make much of a case for herself if she did tarnish something he clearly cared about. Finally, the phone was back within her reach and the fox was leaning down, amused by the way the buttons took up pretty much half of the screen. It would make things easier though, she had to admit that.

Before moving to tap her nose against the screen, she rubbed it against her side at the risk of not wanting to get any dirt on his phone. She’d been traveling like this for awhile now, there was no telling what state she was actually in. Finally, she dipped down to tap her nose against the words S-T-U-C-K. Instead of spelling it outright, it said S-T-I-UU-C-JJ-K. Though, with the help of context clues, she was hopeful that he’d be able to understand what she was trying to say. She watched him carefully as she nudged the phone with her nose back towards him, a low whine building in her chest.

—

Kaden had to admit, he was fascinated watching the fox trying to type on a touchscreen. Definitely not anything he would see in any nature documentary, that was for certain. He was glad he made the buttons bigger because even then, it was clear they were struggling to get the right letters. They’d managed to type something, though, which was honestly impressive all on its own.

He leaned down to get a look at the phone and read what they’d written. “Stiuucjjk,” was what was there on the phone screen. The creases in his forehead deepend as he tried to figure out what the hell they were trying to say. “Is this English?” he asked, looking back at them.

Right. A stupid question considering they’d demonstrated understanding of everything else he’d said prior to now. “Sorry, looked like it was Swedish or something.” He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced over the letters one more time. What the hell was it? Sticky? No, that didn’t make sense. Their fur looked clean and so did their paws for the most part. At the very least, they didn’t look like they’d gotten doused in honey or something. Sick? Maybe, but they seemed mostly okay. But he figured it was a good idea to check. “Sick? Are you sick? Is that why you won’t change?” He tilted his head and tried one more time to sus out what the word translated to. He looked at the letters on the keyboard, trying to get an idea of what letters were next to each other, hoping it would clue him in on the mystery word.

“Stick?” he said out loud. Before he could get confirmation or denial, he reached down on the forest floor and grabbed a stick. “Would this help you type? This it?”

—

The fox let out an annoyed huff as the man asked her if it was English. Couldn’t he read between the lines? She knew that she needed to be patient with him, but it was hard when she was the one stuck like this with no foreseeable way out of it. She was frustrated, to say the least. She hoped that because he seemed to know what she was, he would be able to help– that somewhere in some book there was an explanation of what was happening to her, but then she remembered the stupid spell and how this wasn’t natural to her kind at all. She was fucked.

She watched in disbelief as the man ran through the words, not nearing what she’d actually been trying to say. She sat down, tails flicking in annoyance as he continued on. Sticky, sick, stick. She had half a mind to bite his hand, but he was the one trying to help her, wasn’t he? Or was this some kind of ploy? To keep her distracted for enough time for someone else to swoop in and steal her away? Her ears rotated slightly as she tried to welcome in any sounds around the perimeter, but aside from the sound of birds, they were alone. The fox exhaled, staring at the stick in the man’s hand. She grabbed it from him with her mouth and threw it at his feet before nodding towards the phone again, nose pressed against the deletion key.

She attempted it again, this time carefully prodding her nose against the screen. S-T-Y-U-C-K. That was much better, she decided. She pawed at the side of the phone, urging him to take a look. This had to be easily decipherable– there was no way he wouldn’t understand what she was trying to get across now.

—

When the fox took the stick from his hand, Kaden felt a small swell of pride for having cracked the code. It faded as soon as the stick hit his shoes. “Aright, fine, not a stick.” He grumbled and put the phone back down for the kitsune to type away again. He waited until she looked back up at him, pawing the phone to let him know the message was ready.

“St-yuck,” he said, pronouncing the word aloud exactly as written. Right, that sounded stupid, especially since he realized what it actually said before the second syllable left his lips. “Stuck. Okay, got it.” Well, at least that was solved. The fox was stuck.

Wait, what did that mean? Kaden’s brows furrowed as looked at the fox, back at the cage he had freed them from, and then over to the fox again. Stuck, how? They weren’t stuck anymore. “But you’re out of the cage, what do you mean stuck?”

He didn’t need to be an expert in animal behavior to sense the frustration coming from the tiny furry creature. Obviously the cage was not what they were talking about. “Right, not the cage. Clearly. Not stuck in the cage anymore but still stuck.” And not in place, either. “Stuck… as a fox?” It was said more like a question than a statement even though, in hindsight, that was clearly what they meant the whole time.

“Okay, stuck as a fox. Can’t shift back, I take it. Right.” Kaden scratched at his beard before rubbing his palm down the rest of his face. “Not sure I know how to fix that.” The ranger searched his mind for anyone else who might be helpful. He knew a lot of undead, he knew werewolves, but that wasn’t going to do a kitsune a whole lot of good. “I can take you home or wherever you want to go and we can find someone who can, I guess.” It was the only solution he had at the moment. “Which, um, not sure how you want to direct me to wherever that is.”

—

Finally, the fox thought– he got it. She watched his expression carefully, noting the way in which he seemed to work through the text she’d typed on the phone. Would he think it was something else? Look at her paws for a rock, maybe? She might have to bite him then, she thought. She stared at the man, ears drooping slightly as he came to the wrong conclusion. She had to keep in mind that he was doing most of the communicating, and he was only able to take cues away from her if she’d give them to him.

Once he’d gotten it, the fox nodded. She wasn’t sure what he’d be able to do to help her, if anything, but at least somebody had gotten it right. Only, as soon as he’d come to the grand reveal, he was falling back on his heels. The fox let out a huff and laid down, paws outstretched in front of her. Out of everyone she’d run into today, he was the only one to really figure her out for what she was, and what was wrong with her. The idea of possibly directing him to Felix came to mind, but if he recognized her for what she was, who was to say that he wouldn’t recognize Felix? She couldn’t put them in any kind of harm’s way.

Getting to her own home, and then finding Inge or Felix would be her only way, she thought. She looked at the phone in his hands and sighed, knowing that typing out her address would be one hell of a feat. But if that was her only way…

She nodded towards the phone, snout pushing through the air as if to mimic the way she’d pushed her nose against the screen to spell out what was needed.

—

“You want to try and type again?” Kaden wasn’t sure how well that was going to work out, given how long it took them to spell “stuck.” With typos. “I think it might be easier if you try to direct me once we’re in the car. I’m pretty sure we can find a way.” The ranger was about to turn and indicate for the fox to follow when he realized there was a lot of town out there and a lot of people, too. Wandering blindly with a fox to navigate probably wasn’t the best idea. “On second thought, give me a rough location or someone to head towards. Or a part of town at least. Then you can point the way from there.”

He bent down to place the phone on the ground so they could press their snoot up against the glass to type out each character slowly and carefully. The device brushed the forest floor before Kaden yanked it back up. “Hold on, I have a better idea.” He may not have had those often, but he was pretty sure this was going to be easier than waiting for the fox to type. Not that he had anywhere better to be, sure, but he really didn’t want to get bitten by a frustrated kitsune today if he could avoid it.

Kaden opened up the map app on his phone and zoomed out to an overview map of the town before finally placing it on the ground. This time, however, the ranger stayed crouched next to it. “Okay, I’m going to hover my finger over the map. Yip or howl or whatever it is when I’m over the right place. I’ll zoom in. Same shit.” He went to start and realized he hadn’t figured out how they could tell him he was going the wrong direction. Or anything else but yes, really. “Uh, if I’m wrong, paw me or the phone or something. I guess. And, hmm…” He paused and scratched his beard as he pondered a little more. “Use your head to tell me which direction to go? Or point your paw? Something like that. Make it obvious.” He really hoped this would work. “Alright, ready?”

—

The fox stared up at him unblinking, waiting for the moment that the phone would hit the ground again. She wasn’t sure how directing him would do any good, mostly considering she had no idea where she was. She looked around them in an attempt to get a better idea of where she might’ve gotten herself trapped, but all she saw was underbrush and trees. She turned her attention back towards him as he went to put down the phone, ears flattening back as he scooped it back up within the time it took him to lean down to set it back down. She looked up at him as he explained, realizing that he’d finally come up with a good idea.

At least this would be easier in the grand scheme of things.

This was a better idea than simply getting into his truck and finding the way back home. She wasn’t even really sure if home was where she needed to go at this point– she needed to find Felix or Inge. Still, she was a little apprehensive about bringing somebody who seemed to know what she was right away to her friends who were… not quite human.

At his instruction, the fox nodded, looking down at the phone. As he tapped around, she barked out the orders, scraping her paw through the dirt to the right– then the left. Finally, she saw the neighborhood that Felix lived in. She could figure it out from there, she thought. She stood up and pawed at the dirt in the direction of his truck, trotting over. Maybe he’d get the memo that’s where she wanted to go.

Or, at least she hoped his braincells hadn’t deteriorated in that time.

—

Scrolling through the map for the fox seemed to be working. Kaden was shocked he came up with it at all, to be honest. It was easier to understand than their typos, that was for sure. At one point during the whole thing, it hit him how ridiculous this had to look. There he was, kneeling in the dirt, swiping on a phone while a goddamn fox was giving him directions. It sounded like a bad punchline.

But hey, it worked well enough. The area was easy enough to get to and he was pretty damn familiar with getting around the town by this point given his job. He nodded and followed the fox as they trotted to his truck.

“Hop in the front,” he said as he swung the passenger side door open for the fox. Once they were in, door closed, he went round the front of the truck and slid into his own seat. “Okay, uh, let’s see. You can tap your paw on me to turn right, that’s easy enough. Uhhh… yip once to turn left? That work?” Kaden looked over at the kitsune and had to stifle a laugh. The whole thing had to look ridiculous. An animal control officer with a fox in the front seat playing navigator. This was going to be a wild ride, that was for sure.

Kaden was about to head off when he saw someone down the road, arms waving above their head, clearly trying to get his attention. His mouth pulled into a thin line as the woman approached the car. He couldn’t say what it was, but something felt off. “Get down,” he muttered to the fox, his eyes never leaving the woman as he spoke. “Hide yourself best you can.” There was a towel bunched up in between the seats that he grabbed and tossed in the fox’s direction.

By now the woman was close enough that Kaden could see the weapons strapped to her: a crossbow, knives, what looked like a shotgun, among other things. She was well prepared for these woods by the looks of it. That didn’t mean she was a hunter, sure.

But it didn’t mean that she wasn’t one, either.

Kaden pulled up closer to her, car still running. He wasn’t going to risk putting it in park. Even so, he didn’t want his damn tires blown so he rolled the window down and gave her a small wave, half smile on his face. “Hey there. You need something? I’ve got to head out if–”

She didn’t let him finish his sentence. “Hey, sorry I just–” She was still catching her breath as she leaned on the side of the car, practically hanging in the window. Kaden noticed her eyes were darting back and forth, searching the interior of the truck. She was likely trying to be subtle but it didn’t work. “Sorry, I have a trap out here and I heard there was something found in it and–” It was clear she was frantic and having trouble choosing her words. “Well that’s my trap and if you picked anything up, it could be dangerous. Also it’s mine and, and…”

Kaden’s gaze hardened the more she spoke. She was young, couldn’t be more than twenty-something, if that. “Calm down, breathe.” He tried to angle himself to block her view of the interior as he turned to her. “There wasn’t anything in that trap, sorry. Not sure where you heard that but I have to go, there’s an emergency at–”

“Bullshit,” she spat back at him, her friendly demeanor gone. “I know there was a ki– fox in there. I heard the call in to the station.” The confused look on Kaden’s face didn’t phase her. “Look, I tapped into the radio, whatever, sue me, I don’t care but I need to get that fox. Now. It’s dangerous. And sorry bud, but you definitely don’t know how to handle one like this. Just trust me. Please.”

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t sympathize with the kid. He knew that tone, he knew this song and dance well. It was normally him on the other side. Or it had been, when he thought the same as she did. Putain de merde. He didn’t have time for lessons in ethical beast hunting right now. Especially since he was pretty damn sure she wasn’t going to just listen to him. “Thanks for looking out for me but I promise you, I have it handled. I know a kitsune when I see one.” He didn’t wait for the shock to leave her face before he continued. “This was just a normal fox. Nothing more. And even if it wasn’t, I have it handled. Ranger.”

His heart was pounding in his chest as he waited for whatever came next. Kaden didn’t have a clue how this ranger would react or, worse, how the kitsune in the passenger seat would react. He hadn’t exactly told them he was a ranger. All he could do now was hope that they trusted him enough by now to know he wasn’t out to hurt them.

For one second, it looked like the kid was going to back away and Kaden was ready to take off, foot slowly lifting from the break.

Not his luck, apparently. “Show me,” the ranger said, determination burning in her irises. One of her hands had slipped down out of sight and that could only mean one goddamn thing with a hunter. She had a weapon in hand. And he had a truck, sure, but he didn’t doubt that she knew damn well how to make sure the truck didn’t go too far if she wanted. “Show me the fox. And I’ll go.”

Putain de merde. Kaden’s eyes hovered towards the passenger seat for just a second, even though he didn’t mean to look their way even a little. He didn’t want to reveal them. He wasn’t going to give them up. But right now, they really needed a way out of this.

—

The fox considered turning her back on him in that moment, but he was the only way she’d get to either her apartment, or to Felix or somewhere in between, so that she wasn’t dragging somebody else into harm’s way. She looked at the door for a moment longer before finally deciding to oblige, hopping onto the front seat of the pick up.

The sound of a second set of footsteps set her on edge. Ears rotating slightly, she looked towards the open window, eyes narrowing. The man at her side seemed to be on edge, and the words spoken sent her hackles upwards. The fox followed the orders given to her, slipping below the passenger seat, trying to ignore the way it felt like it was closing in on her. The woman could sense her, and the man could… tell?

Ranger.

The fox’s ears burned with the word. She’d anticipated this moment; realizing that the man who she’d hoped would help her had been on the wrong side. But he hadn’t tried to hurt her. She knew deep down that she couldn’t trust him, and her father’s words came to mind as she blinked up at the dashboard of the truck, head pulled back just enough so that the woman wouldn’t be able to see her if she peered in through the window.

There was desperation in her voice, and it didn’t seem like the man she was with was willing to give her up that easily. She had two choices; believe in the one who had helped her to this moment, or allow her fight for survival to win.

The former eclipsed, and the fox darted from beneath the seat, scrambling out of the passenger side window. In an attempt to trip up the woman before she could be followed in the direction she thought she was headed in, the fox slipped beneath the vehicle, teeth sinking into her ankle. It tasted bad; like dirt and bug spray. Then again, she never found human fun to bite, anyway. It felt primitive, in a way.

The woman shouted, swatting down at her, and the fox sent a orb of fox fire towards the opposite ankle, hopeful it’d deter her from being followed.

She didn’t spare a glance backwards as she dashed back into the brush, avoiding the traps that had been clearly set for those like her.

—

Kaden was just about to slam the gas pedal and get them the fuck out of there when he saw a flash of fur fling itself from the window. “Putain!” he shouted as he scrambled, trying to figure out what to do. Park. Put truck in park. That was step one. He threw the gear and tried to throw himself out of the car just as fast but he wasn’t quick enough. He heard the scream of pain from the ranger and turned just in time to see the fox dart into the distance.

Fuck. Fuck. They were going to get themselves killed. He’d tried so damn hard to help and he couldn’t even–

His thoughts were cut short when he noticed the other hunter limping away, ready to take off after the fox. “Oh no you don’t,” he mumbled to himself. Kaden charged towards her and slammed his body into hers, pinning her to the ground.

“What the hell?!” she shouted back at him, clearly confused as to why another ranger was going after her and not the shifter sprinting into the forest. She fought back, of course she did, but even with her own hunter strength, she couldn’t break free. She was no Keira, that was for sure. His sister would have managed to flip him over and knock the wind out of him with a kick to the gut for good measure by now.

Right. Focus. He wouldn’t be able to keep her there forever and she would go after the kitsune. He had to give them a fighting chance – it was the least he could do. The ranger was young, eager, upholding what she believed to be her sworn duty. It was hard to hate her or even fault her. But he couldn’t just stand up and let her go, not at this point. “Sorry about this,” he said before he swung a fist at the side of her head. Her body went limp as her consciousness drifted away. Her heartbeat was still loud and clear, though.

Kaden shoved down the guilt creeping up his throat as he dragged her body off to the side of the path. He’d call 911 for her. Anonymously. After he was a little ways away.

All he could do now was hope that was enough for the kitsune to find a way to get unstuck.

—

I know what you are.

—

“I mean it. You can shift back now. I promise, I’m not going to tell anyone or hurt you or anything. And it’s going to be easier to speak to each other, as cute as the fox form is.”

Still, nothing. Was there something he was missing?

—

“Stick?” he said out loud. Before he could get confirmation or denial, he reached down on the forest floor and grabbed a stick. “Would this help you type? This it?”

—

She nodded towards the phone, snout pushing through the air as if to mimic the way she’d pushed her nose against the screen to spell out what was needed.

—

At least this would be easier in the grand scheme of things.

Or, at least she hoped his braincells hadn’t deteriorated in that time.

—

But it didn’t mean that she wasn’t one, either.

For one second, it looked like the kid was going to back away and Kaden was ready to take off, foot slowly lifting from the break.

—

Ranger.

The woman shouted, swatting down at her, and the fox sent a orb of fox fire towards the opposite ankle, hopeful it’d deter her from being followed.

She didn’t spare a glance backwards as she dashed back into the brush, avoiding the traps that had been clearly set for those like her.

—

Fuck. Fuck. They were going to get themselves killed. He’d tried so damn hard to help and he couldn’t even–

Kaden shoved down the guilt creeping up his throat as he dragged her body off to the side of the path. He’d call 911 for her. Anonymously. After he was a little ways away.

All he could do now was hope that was enough for the kitsune to find a way to get unstuck.

#writing #wickedswriting #para #c: mona #thunderstroked #fox paw faux pas #head trauma tw

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recoveringdreamer · 7 months ago

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TIMING: current (just after champion fighter) LOCATION: the grit pit SUMMARY: felix deals with the aftermath of the devastating fight between lockjaw and razor. CONTENT: domestic abuse, emotional abuse

Someone dragged them back to the boiler room at some point. They weren’t sure who, couldn’t put a face to the tight grip bruising their skin or the voice growling in their ear. “If you shift right now, I’ll fill you with so much tranquilizer you’ll be out for a week. I’ll make sure you wake up in one of those fucking cages, you understand me? You’ll be begging for the fucking boiler room. We don’t need any more of you shifters’ shit tonight.”

They were only half aware of the words, their breath a quick and desperate thing. In their mind, it kept happening over and over and over again. Lockjaw’s teeth closing around Razor’s throat, the snap of something breaking, the blood arching as he was pulled away. In their mind, it flickered from Lockjaw and Razor to Wyatt and Samir, went back and forth between wild animals tearing each other apart and Felix’s friends talking in front of the boiler room.

They were still watching that fight, finished for a while now, but they were sitting at Samir’s kitchen table, too. They were confiding in someone for the first time in years, and he was smiling and telling them it was okay, telling them he was there for them. There was blood pooling in his mouth as he spoke, running down his chin. Jaws were locked tightly around his neck.

Or maybe they were cooking with Wyatt, were quietly telling him how they’d wound up in the Grit Pit while they piled food onto a plate and he cleaned Razor’s fur out from between his teeth. They were talking about Leo, and he was snapping his jaw shut around the throat of their mutual friend. There was blood on the floor. There was blood on Felix’s hands. There was always blood on Felix’s hands.

People had died in the Grit Pit before. Felix thought they might have even killed a few themself, though they’d never had the courage to confirm it for certain. It was a way of life here, a thing to accept. It was why Felix hadn’t really tried getting to know any of their fellow fighters before Samir and Wyatt. It was so much easier to close your eyes to the bloodstains on the floor of the ring when the blood belonged to strangers, so much easier to pretend someone had just gotten out when you stopped seeing them around if you didn’t have their number saved into your phone.

No one stayed with him in the boiler room. Felix hadn’t expected anyone to. Even if someone had, they knew it wouldn’t have been as a comforting presence. It would have been a show of force instead, a way of keeping them in line. Still… there was something unbearably lonely about the empty room now, even with Squonkella’s watery whimpers in the corner she’d made her own.

Felix’s hands shook as they paced the small space of the room. It only took them three steps to cross it in its entirety, and with the restless grief that had settled into their bones, it wasn’t enough. They needed to get out, needed to be anywhere but this terrible building where they were only permitted to be something besides themself. Trembling, they moved to the door, grabbing the knob and yanking it.

It didn’t open. They yanked again, meeting the same resistance. Another yank, more desperate, and then another and another. They pulled back with all their weight, practically hanging from the door, but it remained closed.

“Hey.” It was a quiet thing, hoarse. They must have screamed at some point, because their throat ached. They cleared it, trying again, louder this time. “Hey!” They pounded their hands against the metal door, palms stinging with the impact. “Hey, I need — I need out! Please, please, I think — I think you locked it, accidentally! I need out! Please!”

A heavy silence met them from the other side of the door. They shifted enough to access the jaguar’s enhanced hearing, but there wasn’t even a heartbeat on the other side of the door. They were alone, they realized. They’d probably been alone for a while now.

Pressing their back against the door, they slid down, pulling their knees up to their chest. “Please,” they repeated, quieter now and with no one to hear them. “Please let me out. Please. I need out.”

With no windows in the boiler room, it was impossible to know how much time passed. Maybe it was minutes, maybe it was hours. Maybe they sat there for days, just waiting for someone to open the door. It didn’t matter. Nothing really did.

Razor was dead. Lockjaw had killed him. Or Samir was dead, and Wyatt had killed him. Or Wyatt had killed Razor, or Lockjaw had killed Samir. Did any of it matter? The end result was the same.

So Felix, or Wildcat, or some thing in between sat in the boiler room against the door with their knees against their chest and fell apart.

The door unlocked, at some point. They heard the latch move, heard laughter just outside as people greeted one another in what must have been the early hours of operation for the Grit Pit. They didn’t move from their spot against the door, sat there with their knees pulled up to their chest, still. Someone pushed at the door from the other side, and Felix didn’t move. They pushed again, harder, until the force was enough to send the balam stumbling forward onto the floor.

“Christ,” a familiar voice scoffed as Leo shoved his way into the room, “what the fuck are you doing, sitting against the door like that?”

He was the last person Felix wanted to see. Their throat burned, their head ached. They scooted towards the mattress in the floor without standing, trying to put space between themself and their ex even in the impossibly small room. Leo, who had never been fond of allowing Felix much of anything in way of reprieve, didn’t allow this, either. He strode forward, pressing the toe of his boot against Felix’s thigh to keep them from moving.

“Hey,” they said harshly. “I’m fucking talking to you.”

“I – Sorry,” Felix said quietly. “I’m sorry. I just — I didn’t sleep last night, so I’m going to —”

“You’re going to get your ass up,” Leo finished for him, reaching down to grab Felix by the arm and yank them up. Felix was forced to his feet, stumbling a little. “The fuck do you think this is, a hotel? You want room service? You need to get ready for tonight.”

“I’m — Uh, I’m not on the — the schedule. For tonight.”

Leo rolled his eyes, yanking Felix towards the door despite the protests. “No, but Razor is. He was supposed to fight Eagle, and seeing as he’s dead as a fucking doornail and your buddy Lockjaw can’t be trusted to fight any headliners without snapping their necks, that means you’re picking up the slack.”

The harsh reminder of the previous night’s events hit hard, and Felix flinched as if they’d been delivered a physical blow. “I — Leo, I can’t. I’m not…”

Leo’s laugh was sharp as a blade, and it cut like one, too. “God, you really are stupid. What part of that sounded like a request, Fe?” His expression seemed to soften, but there was a mocking lurking beneath it. Reaching a hand up, he patted Felix on the cheek in a way that was far from comforting. “Look, this will be good for you. You can make some extra cash, do something about…” He trailed off, looking Felix up and down with a grimace. “I mean, you look like shit, babe.”

Because I’ve been living in a boiler room, they wanted to cry. Because I just watched my friend die, because you and your friends locked me in all night, because I don’t even have a shower in here. I look like shit because of you! But the words got caught in his throat, and he could only manage a nod.

Leo seemed to take it as acceptance, expression melting into a grin. “Good kitty,” he crooned, offering another pat on the cheek. Then, with a harsh shove, he moved Felix out into the hallway, yanking him towards the locker rooms. With each step, Felix felt heavier and heavier, but they weren’t permitted to collapse. Their hands weren’t allowed to shake, their breath couldn’t tremble. Felix had a job to do, and they weren’t allowed to say no.

Leo’s hand remained wrapped around their arm for the full length of that walk to the locker room. Later, the bruises left by his fingers would somehow sting more than the injuries sustained in the fight against Eagle. And that night, Felix would sit against the metal door in the boiler room and let the world fall apart all over again.

But first and foremost… they had to go to work.

#losing dogs #self para #wickedswriting

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razorsharpteeth · 1 year ago

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TIMING: Morning after the last full moon PARTIES: Felix @recoveringdreamer and Samir @razorsharpteeth LOCATION: The Grit Pit locker rooms. SUMMARY: After a fight night, Samir and Felix meet in the locker room and come to the conclusion they faced off in the ring the night before. CONTENT WARNINGS: Discussions of violence/injury

It’d been a hard fight. The kind that left Felix aching, the kind that made them feel like they’d lost even if the officials had called it a draw. Werewolf fights were always particularly grueling, they’d learned; the size difference, the fact that wolves were ‘all or nothing’ type shifters, the way some of them were more animalistic than what Felix was used to dealing with…

It was worse on the full moon, of course. Wolves might have been at their strongest under the full moon’s light, but Felix was the same as they ever were. And unlike the wolves, they didn’t heal any faster on certain days of the month. Sighing, they sat on the bench in the ‘locker room,’ pressing their fingers into the bruises on their side as they felt for broken ribs. Leo had offered use of the Pit’s doctors, but Felix hated feeling like he owed anything to the Pit, hated the way the staff looked at them. They’d rather take their chances at home.

Behind them, a door opened and Felix tensed. Typically, it was Leo who found them after a fight, ready to offer either gloating or comfort. Felix was never entirely sure which was worse. Both left them feeling small. The balam glanced back, relaxing minutely at the revelation that it wasn’t Leo stepping into the room. It was another man instead, vaguely familiar in the kind of way that meant Felix had seen him around the Pit a time or two. “Hey,” they greeted hoarsely, throat aching. The wolf from last night nearly got a grasp on it at one point, and the resulting dodge had sent Felix spinning into the fence. It’d take a while to heal fully; they’d get hurt again before it did. That was how it always went.

—

There was a dull ache coursing through his body as he awoke. Samir thought he liked this part least: the morning after, where his mind and body and soul felt like they’d gone through the ringer. Besides, it was an ugly thing, to wake in a cage too large for his body, with scratchmarks everywhere he looked. But it was better than the alternative, which was waking in a field or on a beach or in a forest, with little to cover him up besides the blood on his hands. This wasn’t ideal, but it was the best solution he had. Most days, he was thankful.

Today, he was mostly tired. Wrapped in a robe he made his way to the dressing room, wanting to wear his normal human clothes again and become something mundane. A man not worth looking at twice. He hoped it’d be empty at this hour, but there was another person in there already, looking worse for wear. Samir hadn’t looked at himself in the mirror just yet, but he felt the presence of parallel wounds on his side. The ones claws could make. He was not interested in facing them, though, just wanted his animalistic side to do what was necessary and heal him up.

“Hello,” he answered, moving over to his locker and putting in the code. He wanted a coffee. He wanted a coffee with a shot of whiskey in it, as well as one on the side. His head throbbed. One more night and he’d be off for the month, good to return to the mundanity he’d forced upon himself. Playing pretend at humanity. Samir considered the other, wonder what kind of beast they were, if any. He wondered if he’d won his fight, but wouldn’t ask the other. “Y’alright?” Shit question, but it felt weird not to say anything. He pulled a bottle of water from his locker. “Got the rest of the day off or …?”

—

The man was wearing a robe, which meant he was probably a wolf. They rarely came into the locker room clothed in the mornings, unable to change partially and keep their wits about them as easily as other shifters especially on full moon nights. It occurred to Felix, in a jarring sort of way, that this was likely the wolf they’d fought. They remembered the jaguar’s claws sinking into the wolf’s side at one point, could see this man holding himself in a way that implied a similar injury. And, like he always did, Felix felt a flood of guilt at the realization.

Leo told him once that he shouldn’t feel bad for what he did in the ring. The people they faced off against, the fae assured them, had signed up for this gig just as much as Felix had. But the circumstances surrounding Felix’s contract were predatory, and they knew they weren’t the only one in such a situation. Most of the people here were stuck, just as he was. And there was guilt in the way his hands were bloody in the mornings. There was shame in knowing they’d be bloody again before long.

Looking away, they focused on the inside of their locker. They doubted the wolf recognized them. He’d seemed more animal than man last night, and Felix wondered if there was comfort in that. Was it better not to know what you’d done and have to wonder? Or was it preferable to have something like this, where the guilt at least reminded you that you were still capable of feeling it? They thought they might prefer the former. Not remembering would be nice. “Supposed to come back in tonight,” they said, still staring at the inside of their locker. “Probably won’t make it. Had a rough one last night. I’m hoping they’ll let me walk it off for a few days.” They probably wouldn’t, but he’d ask for tonight’s matches to be canceled, at least. They might be allowed that much. After all, the Pit wanted to keep their best fighters in a fighting condition. “How about you?”

—

He wanted to just take a singular sip of water and then get to the rest of the things he had to do, but he was dehydrated, chugging the liquid eagerly. It admittedly also helped to keep him from speaking, Samir not deeply interested in bonding with his fellow fighters. He thought himself different from them. Not better or worse, just different. The others fought with their heads clear and present, feeling every beat of the violence inflicted on them and returning the favor. And though they were all presumably caught in a contract they couldn’t get out of, Samir didn’t experience most of his own.

He supposed he was even thankful. A violent dog was better off caged and trapped than running out in the wild. Corinna had given him what no other had been able to: a way to leash that horrid thing inside and with that, a chance to remain in one place for longer than a few months. But Samir could acknowledge that perhaps it wasn’t like that for all here. Some had been tricked. Even worse, some liked the violence and the nature of the work, and wanted to be awake and aware for it. He wondered where the other fell. He wondered who he’d fought last night and if, worst case scenario, it had been him.

“Me too,” he said in between gulps of water. After placing the bottle back, Samir moved to grab his underwear and pants. He observed the other, wondering about his injuries. “I hope you get some time off, then. Fighting when in rough shape …” He shook his head. Even if he wasn’t aware of himself during the fights, he had spent some of his last fights of the moon’s cycle not quite healed yet and had to pay for it the rest of the month. “Just one more fight for me for a while, though. Will probably be patched up when I get back in tonight, though.” That was the one blessing the moon offered. “Probably not gonna do anything for the rest of the day until I’m up again.” He liked summer: it meant the nights were shorter. It meant there was more time in the day where he could cling to sanity.

—

Was it wrong, they wondered, to have a conversation with someone who didn’t have all the facts? The wolf surely knew that he’d been in the ring last night, felt the marks that marred his body, but he didn’t know that Felix was the one who put them there. The balam wondered if they ought to admit to it, if it was predatory somehow to let a stranger live in the dark. They didn’t want to, didn’t want to admit that they’d left those claw marks in this man’s side, didn’t want to cop to all the bruises they’d caused with their wits still mostly about them. Felix could blame the animal inside of them for the violence, but they were always the one who let that animal out. There was no full moon to point a finger at. There was only Felix.

Admitting to that meant admitting to far more than he cared to lay claim to, even if only to himself. Leo often accused them of playing the victim, and maybe he was right to. Felix hadn’t chosen this ‘career path’ for themself, but they chose to do what they did in the ring. They chose to fight for their life instead of allowing themself to lose, chose to claw and bite and punch in order to keep themself in one piece. Maybe an honorable person would have let the outcome differ, would have chosen honor over safety. Maybe a better person wouldn’t have been more afraid to die than they were to lose themself.

They offered the werewolf a small smile, a nod of acknowledgement. “I’m sure I can talk myself into a night off, at least.” More than that was bound to come with consequences. Likely, they’d be forced to weigh pros and cons, to decide if it was better to fight without healing and add new long-term aches and pains to the list or to do whatever the Pit wanted them to do to get out of it. Everything with the Pit was give and take; most of the time, you gave far more than you took. “You heal faster on full moons, right?” Must be nice, they thought, though they didn’t say it. It felt petty to be jealous when they were both in the same rapidly sinking boat. “Yeah, I don’t really have any plans, either. Probably grab a coffee or something on my way home.”

—

He had seen his wolf a few times. Poor reflections on camera images, a snarling and furious creature that showed how feral he was as if he had something to prove. Samir remembered, vividly, coming back home that third month of being this thing, and looking at the images on his phone. A furious creature, bending the metal of an improvised cage, breaking out and leaving ruination in its path. But those images, shot in the dark by his shitty phone camera were not enough to make him feel like he knew that creature, let alone was it. And here was someone who had probably seen him, in all its feral glory.

He wanted to turn his back and get out. But there was still the matter of getting dressed. Sticking his legs into his boxers (pun not intended), he found himself bristling a little. At the situation. The metaphorical corners and, well, the literal ones of the locker room. There was too much unsaid bullshit here. At least this other person didn’t seem like he was bursting with aggression, wanting to play mindless games of superiority and masculinity. Flashing muscles, baring teeth, pissing contest. He tired of it. Maybe in part because he didn’t look like much of a threat in his human, and admittedly preferred form.

“Would be nice. I hope you can get it arranged.” He wondered what the other was. Samir worked on getting his jeans on. He hissed as the scratches on his side, opting to stare at them once his jeans were all buttoned up. Fucking clawmarks. “Yeah. Got the rest of the month off too.” It wasn’t meant to be a boast. Just a statement. For a moment he wondered if the other mentioning coffee was an invitation and he looked at them, pulling off his robe. Bright red marks on display now. “Coffee’s good.” It was more a grunt than a sentence. It felt wrong, that the other knew him and he knew nothing of them. He told himself that this was how he wanted it. Fuck it, though. “So what are you?”

—

He was nice. The werewolf with the sharp teeth and the angry claws, the one who’d made Felix fear for their life the night before when the fight got so much brutal than it usually did, the one they were pretty sure would have killed them if they hadn’t let the jaguar out a little more than they were used to… he was nice. He had kind eyes in this form, his human frame smaller than Felix’s and his voice soft in a way that was hard to fathom. This, too, seemed like something to be jealous of. In this form, the man was unrecognizable. But Felix was still just Felix. The same person who’d been in that ring last night, just with a little less fur and duller teeth.

“Yeah. Thanks, man. Me too.” They cleared their throat, looking away as the man changed. With how much time they spent in a locker room, one might assume that Felix was more comfortable with seeing strangers’ bodies. They weren’t. It always felt like imposing, like doing something wrong. It was almost funny, all things considered; they’d seen a hell of a lot more of this guy last night than they were seeing now. But it felt different in the light of day.

Their eyes were drawn to the claw marks in the man’s side, their fingers curling up into their palms at the sight of it. You did that, you did that, you did that. Guilt settled like a stone in the pit of their stomach, heavy and nauseating. They almost missed the stranger’s question; when it registered, they almost wished they had. In spite of everything, anxiety joined the guilt to twist in their guts. Hadn’t their father told them, time and time again, not to tell anyone what they were? But it wasn’t as if they could hide it here, either. Humans didn’t tend to last long in the Pit, and this likely wasn’t the last time Felix would see the man around. He had to suspect they were some kind of shifter. “Balam,” they said, throat dry. “Uh, jaguar. If you don’t know what a balam is.” Considering they were a little rarer, some people didn’t.

—

He’d have to take a look at the scratches when he’d get home. It’d be good to try and figure out what had done it, just so he’d know if there was any special measures to take — some claws tended to have foreign bacteria’s, after all. But for now he didn’t want to get hung up on his injuries, not wanting to overthink the way he did not remember the night prior and how these slashes might have cost a few bettors their valuable coin. Samir was glad for the separation between man and beast for that: not a lot of them knew that he was Razor, that Razor was him.

But the person in the dressing room with him did. He tried not to think about it, tried not to imagine what kind of judgments the other held towards him. He’d learned since coming to this town that there were wolves more in control, ones who could shift on demand — Corinna had told him, however, that she liked him feral. (He wondered if they did things to anger the wolf prior to fights. They did to some of the other non-humanoid creatures, after all. His lack of memory was a kindness in this regard, too — and besides, he despised his inner wolf. Perhaps it deserved harm, as some form of retribution for all those lives it’d taken.)

He shook his head. “No, hadn’t known.” He kept his head down, slipped in and out of the Pit without lifting his head too much. Samir came here a few hours before the moon came out, transformed and then transformed back and left — he didn’t linger. No amount of thankfulness could make him feel like this was a place worth staying at. “Can you shift on demand?” If he could, he’d not be here. Maybe the other didn’t wish to be here. They didn’t seem excited to speak about the fights of the night before, anyway. He pulled his T-shirt over his body, hiding the scratches once more. “Maybe a weird question, but hey — good for me to know, anyway? Know who I was up against last night? Just so I know how to take care of this.” A vague gesture to his side. Samir tried to hide the distaste he felt for asking this question.

—

Conversation seemed stilted, and Felix wondered if it was exhausting, coming down from a shift. The balam was far different than a werewolf — their father had always been adamant of that, offended when comparisons were made. Even still, the few times in their life that Felix had allowed a full shift to take place had left them tired for days afterwards. The jaguar had its own mind, but the body was still Felix’s. Still accustomed to what it was accustomed to, still not used to the kind of things a jaguar might get up to. Coming down from a full shift felt like the aftermath of working out in a gym for a week straight with no break. Everything was sore, every muscle ached. Felix couldn’t imagine doing it three nights a month. They barely liked to do it at all, could count on one hand the number of times they’d fully shifted.

But they were lucky. They knew that. Most of the time, balam got a say in whether or not they shifted. The only time that choice was taken from them was when things got too intense, when the jaguar felt the need to jump out and protect. It happened sometimes, of course, but not often. Felix might have had very little control over the majority of his life thanks to the grip the Grit Pit had on him, but he could at least control this. “Yeah,” they confirmed. “Can, uh… shift partially, too.” They shifted their eyes enough to let them flash gold at the stranger, offering him a small smile.

At the question, though, Felix looked away. Their face reddened, their eyes went to their feet. Most people who were here wouldn’t take offense to things that happened in the ring. They knew that the vast majority of them were in the same situation — bound by a contract that was by no means the fault of the other person in the ring. Still, there was something nervewracking about the idea of making a confession. But Felix didn’t want to lie, so they shrugged. They focused on the bench, tapped their finger against it. “Um… It might have been me? I’m sorry.”

—

As the other flashed their eyes at him, Samir looked a little too long. His time at the Grit Pit had exposed him to all kinds of supernatural, broadening his worldview with some pretty horrifying things. Part of him wished to remain in ignorance, but that was proving harder and harder. This was at least not scary — this was almost beautiful, that flash of gold. “Damn. That’s cool.” He mirrored their smile. It almost made him curious enough to wonder what he was like in the ring, but no: that was something he did not wonder. He did not watch, just as he did not remember.

But then the other answered the question he’d asked them himself, foolishly enough, and revealed it had been them he’d gone up against. Samir swallowed, shook his head. “Don’t fu- don’t apologize.” He didn’t want to come off as abrasive, but he felt his neck hairs standing up, the way a dog’s might. Cornered creature, ready to growl or bark — not because the other was threatening him, per se (though he had certainly scratched him open last night) because this was too close for comfort.

It was his own fault, of course. He had asked. So the claw marks belonged to a jaguar — now he knew, and was he better off for it? Samir looked at the other, who was at least very much alive, even if they’d said that they were worse for wear. Had a rough one last night, he’d said. Samir swallowed the comment on how he’d probably gotten lucky: generally the staff or Corinna left him in his bubble of ignorance. Whenever Razor killed one of his opponents, though, it was relayed to him. Sometimes it meant more money. Sometimes less. Neither were great outcomes. “Gave a good fight, at least, right?” He started to fold his robe. “First time it was us, or? I — well. Shit. Don’t remember, you know. Hope I didn’t cost you a ton of money, or whatever.” That was the business. He couldn’t get involved like that. He couldn’t get involved with that fucking heart of his. “I don’t … wanna know. If you don’t mind. How it went. If I cost you a ton of money, I’ll buy you a coffee and that’s it. Yeah?”

—

The werewolf said that’s cool, and Felix felt a flush of pride. It wasn’t something they got to feel often anymore, though they’d certainly been raised in it. To be a balam, their parents always told them, was a great honor. To be chosen by the spirit of an ancient god, to have it use you as a vessel, as a home. It was something that set balam apart from other shifters, something noble and true instead of a curse or a thing left to fate. But Felix hadn’t felt much pride in it in years now. Not with the way their mother died as an animal, not with how their father ripped people to shreds, and certainly not in the way they spent most nights in a pin fighting creatures and people in a way that was so far from human.

But the werewolf said that’s cool, and Felix let themself believe that it was. Even if only for a moment.

They nodded when told not to apologize, biting back another apology for that. I’m sorry were perhaps the two words Felix used most often. They didn’t used to be, but after their relationship with Leo, after years of being told that everything was their fault… The words became like punctuation, tacked to the end of every sentence, of every breath. And they were always true. Felix was always sorry, even when they didn’t say it.

The werewolf seemed to shift as the conversation continued, and Felix shifted, too. It was like the locker room had become smaller, like the words were filling the empty space that used to exist for them to occupy. They’d gone at each other last night, and they’d both carry the scars of that altercation for the rest of their lives. The werewolf would heal with the moon, but Felix’s clawmarks in his side would scar all the same. “First time it was us,” he confirmed. A faint smile ghosted his features, a smirk that was an echo of someone he’d been years ago. Before the Grit Pit, before Leo. “What makes you think you won?” Felix wasn’t sure either of them had won. It seemed to excite Corinna; they suspected this wouldn’t be the last time Wildcat went up against Razor. “That’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it. I, um… You didn’t cost me a ton of money, but we can go for a coffee anyway. If you want.”

—

The other’s comment made Samir’s eyebrows raise, lightly amused by the other’s amusement. “Right. That’s bold of me to assume.” Razor did bring in a lot of wins and that came with its own complicated feelings he preferred not to think of — it did make it so that he assumed the worst. He was intruding onto people’s livelihood, not only by doing physical harm but through their scaled pay as well. Winning meant more damage was done, meant there was more to attempt to ignore. (He wished to lose, he thought, he wished for that side of him to know what it was to be hurt. Maybe it already did – was it enough, though?)

The folded robe returned to his locker, his bag retrieved. “Appreciate it.” Thanks was no longer in his vocabulary. Someone had explained it two months into his tenure here, where Samir had gotten into plenty of fae-shit through naivete. “Alright. A coffee.” He nodded, locked his locker and made his way to the exit with the other in tow — as if they were two normal colleagues, getting a drink after their shift.

#threads.#felix.#post-match meeting.

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gossipsnake · 1 year ago

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A Shift in the Atmosphere || Anita & Felix

TIMING: Current LOCATION: The Grit Pit PARTIES: @gossipsnake and @recoveringdreamer SUMMARY: Anita meets up with Felix backstage after a fight and expresses her distain that a superior being such as a shifter is bound to fight at the whim of others. A plan is set in motion. CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A

The Grit Pit always lived up to its name. It was gritty and it was a pit. Anita didn’t always go around to the Pit, but she did on occasion. It was a nice place to be and sort of live anonymously. People didn’t pay much attention to anyone around that wasn’t in the ring. She liked that. And she really liked the violence of the sport. And she loved seeing her fellow shifters give everyone else a thorough beat-down. And if she turned a bit of a profit in the process? Well, who would turn their nose up at that.

Tonight had been a thrilling adventure in why shifter species were innately superior to nearly all others. There were several of the underground fights that held a shifted champion - though sadly none were lamia. Anita often wondered why she never saw lamia fighting in the ring. Maybe it was because this colder climate didn’t tend to draw in other lamia or maybe it was because they knew that fighting while bound to a fae was simply beneath them.

One of the fighters, however, caught her attention more than the rest. She was fairly sure she had seen them fight before - a particularly brutal balam. Anita won a sizable amount of money betting on him and decided that it was finally time that she met the man in person. She slipped a bit of her winnings to the guard who let her slip into the back area where the fighters went after their matches. The whole space smelled of the sharp iron scent of blood. “Quite the night you’ve had.” She said to the balam in spanish when she arrived, trying to gauge if he knew the language like his name and species suggested he might.

Nights like this weren’t ones Felix particularly enjoyed. Granted, they didn’t like any night which saw them at the Grit Pit, but on nights like tonight? He’d been put into several fights back to back, one after another. Part of him wondered if it was because of the argument they’d had with Leo a week or so back, just before tonight’s schedule was finalized. They couldn’t even remember now what the argument had been about, but Leo never liked it when Felix spoke his mind. He never really had, even in the beginning.

So nights like this found the balam aching, lying on their back on one of the benches in the Pit’s makeshift locker room and searching for the motivation they’d need to pull themself together and collect the envelope full of cash waiting for them in the front of the building. He could lay down a few moments longer, he knew; the money wouldn’t even be available to him until after the spectators were gone. It breaks the illusion if people see the fighters walking around the floor, Leo told them once. Felix couldn’t bring himself to care how much of the statement was true and how much was some careful manifestation of the facts.

Someone approached them, and Felix removed the arm he’d thrown over his face to squint up at her. Not one of the fighters, at least not from tonight’s matches; her clothes were too pristine for that, and none of tonight’s fighters had gotten away without visible bruising. “Night like any other,” they responded, slipping into Spanish easily enough. It had been their mother’s first language, and spoken in their childhood home just as often as English up until her death. After, Felix and his siblings had used it enough to keep from losing it, but not as much as they once had. It felt familiar on his tongue all the same. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be back here.”

There was a noticeable grin that spread across Anita’s face when the fighter replied in Spanish, although there was something in his tone that told her he was American by birth. Either way, a fellow shifter who also spoke her mother tongue, the night was already turning out better than she could have wanted. Admittedly, she didn't have much of a game plan with regard to what she planned on doing next. There had just been a pull, an urge, to speak with the balam that she didn’t question.

“Probably not. I go to a lot of places I’m not supposed to be though.” Anita wasn’t clueless about this place - she knew about their predatory contracts and the fae who enforced them. Hell, if it weren’t for those contracts she may have hopped in the ring once or twice herself just to show these people how superior lamia are. It was hard not to wonder how desperate a person had to be before they put their name down in ink here.

“Several brutal fights in a row is a night like any other?” She had no way to know of course, but Anita hoped that carrying on in Spanish might cause them to open up more as she presumed that there weren’t many ears listening in who would catch what they were saying. She wanted to get a better read on this guy, see what he was all about. “Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, though. You’re superior to everyone you’ve stepped into that pit with - and you put on a hell of a show. Makes sense they’d want to utilize you as much as they can.”

She seemed pleased at his response, and Felix supposed that made sense. There was something comforting about hearing your first language, they supposed. It wasn’t something they’d ever dealt with themself — as an English-speaking American who still lived in his country of birth, most people spoke in a language Felix understood — but his mother had always seemed happier speaking Spanish. Felix made a note of it now, filed the stranger’s face away into memory with a reminder to default to Spanish when they saw her.

“Ah. Not a rule follower, then?” There was a hint of amusement to their tone, despite their typically sour, post-fight mood. Felix liked anyone who went against the Pit’s rules, even if they were rarely able to partake in such rebellion themself without consequences. It was like seeing someone kick the cage you were trapped in; it didn’t help you, it might even shake you around a little… but the principle of the action was exciting all the same.

Shrugging, Felix pushed himself up into a sitting position. His ribs ached. In moments like this one, the balam found themself wishing they had the same accelerated healing that werewolves boasted on full moon nights. Healing at a human pace when you spent most nights in a fighting ring was excruciating. “In this job, it is,” they replied. Her words were a little perplexing, and Felix furrowed their brow a little as they sunk in. Superior was a strange way of putting it, wasn’t it? “Not sure they see me as superior. I think they’re just fans of my ability to throw a punch. Some of it’s luck, too. Lots of people here are good fighters.”

“I take rules as gentle suggestions, not absolutes.” Anita responded, wondering if the fighter felt the same way. Sure, one might presume that anyone who competed in an underground supernatural MMA fighting ring didn’t care much for the rules, but people do things outside of their comfort zone with exceptional frequency when the situation is dire enough.

She saw the struggle with which he adjusted himself and Anita wondered if balam’s did not have the ability to heal themselves at a quick rate. Or maybe they simply could not do so while in their human form. Interesting. “It doesn’t matter how they see you, really.” Anita offered with a shrug, opting to take a seat on the bench across from him as she decided this conversation was now worth her while.

“And you shouldn’t discredit your success as simply luck.” It was necessary to be somewhat delicate in her wording here, Anita could tell by his response that he did not yet see the world the way she did. He did not fully recognize his place in it. “Certain creatures, well, we’re meant to loom largely over those beneath us. There’s no shame in recognizing that.” She paused for a moment to try and see how that last bit sat with him before continuing, “After all, there is a reason the jaguar was worshiped by the Mayans and not the other way around, no?”

“A woman after my own heart,” Felix replied, mood lightening even further. They liked this woman, they decided, albeit tentatively. It was hard to fully trust anyone who came round the Pit’s makeshift locker room considering the way he’d been mocked by such a large portion of the staff after signing the contract Leo had tricked him into, but this woman didn’t seem like staff. And she didn’t seem like she was here to mock them. Just… talk.

Felix didn’t like talking as much as he used to, of course. It felt like they were always on the edge of something, balancing some tightrope whose rules they still didn’t understand. Don’t make promises, don’t thank people, don’t give things away… It was hard to keep it all straight, and they found themself slipping up so often that they thought they might be lucky that the Pit’s contract was the worst bond that had come of it so far. “Easier to say from the outside,” he said with a wry smile, looking down at his hands.

They had some skill as a fighter, of course; if they didn’t, the Pit wouldn’t be holding onto them quite so tightly. But what she was saying? About looming over those beneath them? Felix wasn’t sure he understood all that. “Jaguars don’t worship much of anyone,” they confirmed with a nod, feeling the low rumble of the spirit inside of them as it growled its agreement. “But I’m not sure that puts me above anyone. The jaguar lives in me. I’m not him, and he’s not me. Two minds, one body. You know?”

It was clear to her from the responses that she was getting that Anita could work with this person. Work with them towards what? Well, she hadn’t figured that part out yet. She had time though, for now she just knew that this was the kind of person she wanted on her side. After all, the idea of a fellow shapeshifter being bound to fight for the amusement of fae didn’t exactly sit right with her.

“Lots of things are easy to say from the outside, you’re right. I don’t pretend to understand the situation that you are in. Here to lend an ear if you’d ever care to explain, though.” Anita took a moment to look around the room they were sitting in, looking around at the Pit’s staff and the other fighters. They were paying some attention to her, which was not surprising given how out of place she looked, but none of their looks made her think they understood the conversation that was being had.

It was intriguing to hear the dichotomy that the balam described. She had heard the descriptions of the creature within them being somehow… separate from their own self, but admittedly she never knew how much she believed that. She knew that like lamia, balams were born with their innate gift and could transform into the jaguar absent external forces such as the moon. Anita had never quite considered that the connection was so different from her own. “Two minds, one body.” She repeated, as if she truly did understand. “That doesn’t change the fact that…” she paused, leaning in a bit and lowering her tone to truly ensure she wasn’t overheard, “... that you’re better than this place. Better than these people. You see that, no?”

It was a tempting offer. They’d been at this a while, but it was hard to find someone to talk to about it. After all, they didn’t really know anyone in town aside from Leo — he’d made sure of it. And it wasn’t as if he’d lend a listening ear. He might pretend to, sure; he did that sometimes. But at the end of the day, anything Felix said could and would be held against him at the next available opportunity.

A more paranoid person in his position might have wondered if the woman was a honeytrap of sorts. Sending in ‘undercover agents’ to convince their fighters into saying things that could be used against them later wouldn’t be the cruelest trick the Pit had ever pulled. But Felix, in spite of everything, was trusting. “I might take you up on that,” they decided with a small, grateful smile. “I don’t really have a lot of people to talk to. Most of the fighters here are either afraid of me, or… in a better position.” Most contracts weren’t quite as tight as the one that had Felix bound. They’d never known if Leo had intentionally made their contract that way as an additional means of control or if it was a decision made by some higher ups who saw opportunity.

Whatever she was, she wasn’t balam. That was evident in the expression on her face as Felix explained the connection. He got the feeling she was some kind of shifter, though it felt intrusive to try to figure out what kind. Not kitsune, and she didn’t strike him as a wolf. Those were usually a little less… at peace with their nature than she seemed to be. A siren, maybe, or a lamia. They could see either one. “Yes,” he confirmed. “It’s different than other shifters. The jaguar protects me, and I protect him. It’s symbiotic.” They smiled at her statement, though the expression didn’t quite reach their eyes. “If I am or if I’m not, it doesn’t change anything. I’m not in a position to leave it, and even if I were, I’ve nowhere else to go. But it is kind of you to say.”

It wasn’t much yet, but Anita felt pleased with herself that she had gotten them to confide in her even just a little bit. In just a few sentences she had learned a fair amount: they were alone, they did not have a clear support system, and they felt that others had more power over the situation they were in. “Well now you have people to talk to.” She said nonchalantly with a slight wave of her wrist, as if that motion made her declaration so. “I’m Anita Nieves. Pleasure to meet you.” She desperately wanted to know how wrong life must have gone for the balam for them to wind up here, but knew this was not the ideal spot for such a conversation.

The way they explained how the dynamic with their other side worked made it clear to Anita that they certainly did not mistake her for the same beast. She didn’t mind that they figured that out but she hoped that they had at least been able to realize she was of similar kind. The idea of being a distinct and separate creature from her lamia form was not something she ever cared to experience. “I don’t say it to be kind. Please do not mistake this conversation for simple niceties.”

Still, however, Anita was unsure what he should be taking her conversation as. Like with much of her actions, she just sort of impulsively had decided to strike up a conversation with the fighter unsure of what it was going to lead to. But even in just their brief exchanges, she wanted to know more. “Creatures like you are not meant to be caged… are not meant to fight or kill on command or be beholden to the whims of others.is not the end of your story. If you let me, perhaps I can help you write a different ending” What she meant was that creatures like them should be able to fight and kill at their own whims and pleasure, but she wasn’t exactly sure how that idea would go over just yet. “This,” she said gesturing around to the space they were in, “.”

Was it that easy? Meet someone in a locker room once, and that’s all it takes? Felix was a little hesitant in spite of their trusting nature, unsure how much to reveal to a stranger. But he was lonely, to the very core. They’d been in this position for so long now, and there was no one they could really talk to about it. Any friends they’d managed to make were outside the Pit and had no knowledge of it; most people didn’t even know Felix wasn’t human. This woman — Anita Nieves — she might not be a balam, but she was a shifter. And that went a long way, when it came to trust. “Felix Mendoza,” they introduced themself with a small smile.

“Then why do you say it?” Realizing how it sounded, they held up their hands. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be rude. I don’t often speak to people who don’t have some ulterior motive. I’m not saying I think you do, but… Better to know someone’s intentions up front sometimes, isn’t it?” If they’d been more careful about thinking of other people’s intentions in the past, they wouldn’t be in this position now. Instinct often still pushed them to be trusting, but they were trying to be better. Smarter. It was just… a bit of an uphill climb.

But god, it was tempting to take her at her word here. They wanted so badly to believe her, wanted to think that what she was saying was true. That they deserved better than this, that they shouldn’t have to be a gladiator forced to fight for the entertainment of others. But what choice did they have? They’d tried to go against their contract before. They knew what kind of consequences it wrought. Felix didn’t want to die. They knew what a coward that made them. “Endings aren’t so easy to write, sometimes. It’s not so easy to get away from this. I’ve tried, you know. How do you plan to help?”

It was good, Anita thought, that they were finally seeming a bit skeptical. Even if the question was preceded by unnecessary rationalization. It was time for her to be quick on her feet, she still didn’t really have any sort of plan or any solidified intentions, but that didn’t change her overall convictions. “I say that you are better than this place because it is a simple universal truth.” At least, it was in her mind - even though she lived among humans and other creatures, Anita knew that shifters were superior. It felt important to phrase that position delicately, however, given that Felix viewed himself and the jaguar as distinct persons.

“I have no ulterior motive in that assertion.” The statement felt mostly true, true enough. “I was raised surrounded by our kind, raised to be skeptical of how others perceived us. Often, they cannot see beyond the creature inside. Even others who are part of our world or who appear sympathetic… they will always try to suppress us because they fear what may happen if we take control of our own power.” As Anita spoke, she hoped that what she was saying would resonate with Felix.

She would have to figure out later why she felt so compelled to help get them out of this position, and whether or not she did have a not-so-altruistic reasoning for it, but for now Anita was simply enjoying the concept of sparking a rebellion. “I’m not going to lie, I have no answer to that question right now. I don’t have a plan and I don’t doubt that it’s not easy to get away from all this. But I see you want it and I have resources… and as we already established, neither of us are big on following the rules.”

A universal truth? Felix wasn’t sure how much stock they could put in that. It was strange, hearing her speak like this after years of hearing the opposite. Even when their relationship was at its best, Leo hadn’t particularly cared for the jaguar. It was animalistic, he’d said, unnatural. It was something that, perhaps, made a little more sense after the revelation that he was fae; in Felix’s experience, fae seemed to view anyone who wasn’t fae as lesser. (Though that could have been their bias speaking; they weren’t exactly a fan.) Hearing someone imply that they were superior because of their nature instead of the opposite felt… strange. Like wearing someone else’s clothes — it itched in the wrong places.

“And what kind are you?” It seemed fair to ask, didn’t it? She knew what Felix was, had seen it in that ring. It was another thing the Pit had taken from them. There used to be intimacy in showing someone a piece of th someone in hopes that they would still accept you for it. But now? Those sacred parts of him were on jaguar, like opening up a long-hidden part of yourself to wrfull display to strangers, night after night.

Getting out was all they really wanted. It had been all they wanted ever since they’d realized the weight of the contract and the restrictions of it. Trusting a stranger seemed risky when trusting someone they loved was what had gotten them into this to begin with, but… It wasn’t like anyone else was offering to help, was it? It wasn’t like anyone else cared if Felix was free or not. “Okay,” they said quietly. “Okay, yeah. If you really want to help… I could use it. Um, what do you need to know?”

Anita smirked at the question that she had been wondering if he would ever ask. It had been her experience growing up that some in the supernatural community did not care for lamia. As she made her way through her various higher educational pursuits, Anita had rarely been surrounded by others in the community and kept that part of herself so tightly hidden. Throughout her time in this town, however, she had begun to learn that people without a community of their own tend to just gravitate to similarities. “Lamia.” She’d share the specifics about her precise lamia self at a later time, especially since she knew that word - no matter what accent she said it in - was recognizable to those around them.

“Right now, I just need to know when you have some free time to meet with me in … well, in an environment more conducive to this conversation.” While plotting a rebellion within the locker room of the beast’s belly was rather exciting, Anita knew that even carrying on in Spanish, this was a bigger risk than they needed to be taking right now. Introductions had been made and they had time to figure things out at another location. “For now, just keep yourself alive until we can meet again.” She pulled out a business card from her bag and wrote out her cell phone number on the back of it before handing it to him. No matter what happened with all this, Anita had a feeling it would be a bit of fun. For her, at least.

Lamia. She sounded proud of it, and Felix could relate. They’d always been taught to be proud of what they were, too. A spirit of protection chose our family, their mother used to say. It’s an honorable thing. And it was. They still believed that, even if it didn’t feel like much of an honor when they were in the ring, bloody and aching. “I’ve only ever met a few lamia,” they said. There were a couple at the Pit, though Felix wasn’t often put against them in the ring. “It’s good to meet you, though. Really good. I’m always happy to meet more.” Shifters felt safe in a way few other species did. Call it a side effect of growing up the way they had. And Anita, with her words of comfort and her offer to help? She felt even safer than most.

“We can get in touch later,” they promised. Making any plans here ran the risk of having someone know when and where they were meeting… and coming to intercept them. The last thing Felix wanted was to drag Anita into his mess. They offered her a small smile as she asked them to keep themself alive, nodding their head. That wouldn’t be a problem; Felix was good at keeping themself alive. For better, or for worse. When his hands were bloody and his heart was pounding, it often felt so much more like the latter. Reaching out, they took the business card and tucked it away into their shirt pocket. “Thank you,” they said quietly. “For listening.” They hadn’t realized quite how much they’d needed someone to do just that.

#felix #chatzy #c:felix #a shift in the atmosphere #writing #para #p:felix

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